One day I went up town and while there took a notion to go to the little mining town, to see the relatives who had got me the job there seven years before. But it was ten miles, with no train before the following morning. Just then the colored caller called out a train to M—boro and St. Louis, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that I had almost forgotten Miss Rooks. Why not go to M—boro? I had not expected to pay her a visit but suddenly decided that I would just run over quietly and come back on the train to C—dale at five o'clock that afternoon. I jumped aboard and as M—boro was only eight miles, I was soon in the town, and inquiring where she lived.
I found their house presently—they were always moving—and just a trifle nervously rang the bell. The door was opened in a few minutes and before me stood Jessie. She had changed quite a bit in the three years and now with long skirts and the eyes looked so tired and dream-like. She was quite fascinating, this I took in at a glance. She stammered out, "Oh! Oscar Devereaux", extending her hand timidly and looking into my eyes as though afraid. She looked so lonely, and I had thought a great deal of her a few years ago—and perhaps it was not all dead—and the next moment she was in my arms and I was kissing her.
I did not go back to C—dale on the five nor on the eight o'clock—and I did not want to on the last train that night. I was having the most carefree time of my life. They were hours of sweetest bliss. With Jessie snugly held in the angle of my left arm, we poured out the pent-up feelings of the past years. I had a proposition to make, and had reasons to feel it would be accepted.
The family had a hard time making ends meet. Her father had lost the mail carrier's job and had run a restaurant later and then a saloon. Failing in both he had gone to another town, starting another restaurant and had there been assaulted by a former admirer of Jessie's, who had struck him with a heavy stick, fracturing the skull and injuring him so that for weeks he had not been able to remember anything. Although he was then convalescing, he was unable to earn anything. Her mother had always been helpless, and the support fell on her and a younger brother, who acted as special delivery letter carrier and received twenty dollars a month, while Jessie taught a country school a mile from town, receiving twenty-five dollars per month. This she turned over to the support of the household, and made what she earned sewing after school hours, supply her own needs. It was a long and pitiful tale she related as we walked together along a dark street, with her clinging to my arm and speaking at times in a half sob. My heart went out to her, and I wanted to help and said: "Why did you not write to me, didn't you know that I would have done something?"
"Well," she answered slowly, "I started to several times, but was so afraid that you would not understand." She seemed so weak and forlorn in her distress. She had never been that way when I knew her before, and I felt sure she had suffered, and I was a brute, not to have realized it. Twelve o'clock found me as reluctant to go as five o'clock had, but as we kissed lingeringly at the door, I promised when I left C—dale two evenings later I would stop off at M—boro and we would discuss the matter pro and con. This was Saturday night.
The next morning I called to see Daisy. I was unusually cheerful, and taking her face in my hands, blew a kiss. She looked up at me with her grey eyes alert and with an air of suspicion, said: "You've been kissing somebody else since you left here." Then leading me into the parlor in her commanding way, ordered me to sit down and to wait there until she returned. She had just completed cleaning and dusting the parlor and it was in perfect order. She seemed to me to be more forward than ever that morning, and I felt a suspicion that I was going to get a curtain lecture. However, I escaped the lecture but got stunned instead.
Daisy returned in about an hour, dressed in a rustling black silk dress, with powdered face and her hair done up elegantly and without ceremony or hesitation planted herself on the settee and requested, or rather ordered me to take a seat beside her. She opened the conversation by inquiring of South Dakota, and took my hand and pretended to pare my finger nails. I answered in nonchalant tones but after a little she turned her head a little slantingly, looked down, began just the least hesitant, but firmly: "Now what arrangements do you wish me to make in regard to my coming to South Dakota next fall?"
For the love of Jesus, I said to myself, if she hasn't proposed. Now one advantage of a dark skin is that one does not show his inner feeling as noticeably as those of the lighter shade, and I do not know whether Miss Hinshaw noticed the look of embarrassment that overspread my countenance. I finally found words to break the deadly suspense following her bold action.
"Oh!" I stammered more than spoke, "I would really rather not make any arrangements, Daisy."
"Well," she said, not in the least taken back, "a person likes to know just how they stand."