Carolyn of the Corners

by Ruth Belmore Endicott

The carpenter had always been a self-centred individual, desirous of his own comfort, and rather miserly. He had not approved, in the first place, of the intimacy between Joseph Stagg and his daughter Amanda.

“No good’ll come o’ that,” he had told himself.

That is, no good to Jedidiah Parlow. He foresaw at the start the loss of the girl’s help about the house, for his wife was then a helpless invalid.

Then Mrs. Parlow died. This death made plainer still to the carpenter that Mandy’s marriage was bound to bring inconvenience to him. Especially if she married a close-fisted young business man like Joe Stagg would this be true. For, at the reading of his wife’s will, Mr. Parlow discovered that the property they occupied, even the shop in which he worked, which had been given to Mrs. Parlow by her parents, was to be the sole property of her daughter. Mandy was the heir. Mr. Parlow did not possess even a life interest in the estate.

It was a blow to the carpenter. He made a good income and had money in bank, but he loved money too well to wish to spend it after he had made it. He did not want to give up the place. If Mandy remained unmarried there would never be any question between them of rent or the like.

Therefore, if he was not actually the cause of the difference that arose between the two young people, he seized and enlarged upon it and did all in his power to make a mere misunderstanding grow into a quarrel that neither of the proud, high-spirited lovers would bridge.

Jedidiah Parlow knew why Joe Stagg had taken that other girl to Faith Camp Meeting. The young man had stopped at the Parlow place when Amanda was absent and explained to the girl’s father. But the latter had never mentioned this fact to his daughter.

Instead, he had made Joe’s supposed offense the greater by suggestion and innuendo. And it was he, too, who had urged the hurt Mandy to retaliate by going to the dance with another young man. Meeting Joe Stagg later, the carpenter had said bitter things to him, purporting to come from Mandy. It was all mean and vile; the old man knew it now—as he had known it then.

All these years he had tried to add fuel to the fire of his daughter’s anger against Joe Stagg. And he believed he had benefited thereby. But, somehow, during the past few months, he had begun to wonder if, after all, “the game was worth the candle.”

Suddenly he had gained a vision of what Amanda Parlow’s empty life meant to her. And it was empty, he knew—empty of that love which every woman craves; empty of the greatest thing that can come into her life.