It was a matter of satisfaction to Mr. ’Gene Carey that his kinswoman had gone to live with her within the first year of her orphanhood; Ada Tenafee, he felt as did his Cousin Amos, the head of the clan, was a fine woman, a fine, high-spirited woman, all Tenafee, and a fatherless, motherless girl could not be more wisely and genteelly guarded and guided.
It was, indeed, a most excellent arrangement for the woman as well as the girl: Miss Ada punctiliously paid her board, and—in the first week of her occupancy—sent the yellow slattern Emma-leen packing and installed a decent black woman in her place. The hideous house became clean and orderly again, meals were well cooked and served, and the very presence of a Tenafee in a Darrow house had a soothing—almost a sanctifying effect. Glen, feeling the pressure of her father’s prejudice, had faithfully tried half a dozen boarders before she asked Miss Ada to live with her—school-teachers, clerks in stores, a librarian—but without satisfaction, and her conscience was clear. She let herself enjoy the gentleness which the faded spinster brought with her, and the increased serenity of daily living, but she held herself sternly faithful to her father’s codes. The thing had seemed to arrange itself; “Miz-zada” was to come to her; they were predestined to live together.
And she had exactly the same feeling with regard to her position in the mill. Sensing her one woman friend’s antagonism to Luke, in spite of her careful tact, she tried honestly to settle herself in other situations—a book shop, the little city’s one big department store, a tea room—but the hours, the work, the pay, the surroundings, left something always to be desired, and when Luke told her Mr. Carey would make a place for her at the mill she went gladly. That, too, apparently had been decided for her; she and Luke Manders were to work together. Her father, she felt sure, would be glad to have her there, among his mill people, studying them, befriending them, discovering ways to better conditions.
As for the association with Luke, she approached it steadily, but with a tiny inward quiver of curiosity. Luke had been wonderful in his attitude since Dr. Darrow’s death; never by look or word had he betrayed his knowledge of her father’s dying wish, or urged her compliance. He came seldom, especially after Miss Ada’s establishment as duenna, and when he came he said little, but there was hardly a waking hour when the girl was not aware of him—his bold beauty, his eagle gaze, his poise, the strength and depth of his silence. “Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty ...” the doctor had said, “and no foolishness in the meantime ... no hand-holding ... no mooning ’round ...” and she had obeyed him. It had been easy to obey him, with the fine austerity of Luke’s conduct. It was easy, still, in their close and constant companionship at the mill, for the young mountaineer never relaxed his vigilant curb upon himself. She was aware, however, that there was a curb; increasingly aware. On her nineteenth birthday she woke early to a riotous duet between a cardinal and a mocking bird on a bough beside her window, and they seemed, between them, to be giving rapturous expression to her morning meditations.
“Wait till you’re nineteen ... twenty....”
She was nineteen. She had waited. Need she wait any longer? Little as she had been about with boys and girls, few as were her contacts with the young life about her, and meager as had been her romantic reading (even after the doctor’s death she had kept on with the histories and philosophies and the fiery weeklies) she knew that theirs was an amazing friendship, an astonishing romance. He had never brought her a flower; they had never sat side by side on stools at the drug-store counter on summer evenings, drinking ice-cream sodas; they had never gone to a moving picture together. He came sometimes to the dull house in the dull street, and they sat on the veranda if Miss Ada was reading in the sitting room, in the sitting room, if she happened to be upstairs—the cheerful, tidy, ugly room with its golden oak and strident carpet, and Effie Darrow’s one treasure, the Persian rug, but their talk was always of work, his work, hers, or theirs, if she did not read aloud to him from her father’s books.
But that, she told herself, leaping from her bed, taking the frigid shower of her father’s prescribing, flying into vest and knickers and the stern simplicity of her business dress, all that belonged to the past, before she was nineteen ... twenty....
“My dear,” Miss Ada remarked with solicitude, “you’ve hardly sipped your coffee, and you haven’t touched your cereal!”
“I’m not hungry, Miss Ada.”
Her friend began a soft and anxious clucking. “You’re quite sure, honey, that you are perfectly well?”