“After you left you know mother died, then father, and I was left alone. Our little farm—well, I’ve paid off the mortgage. It was hard work, but the five years have passed so quickly. They always do when one works for love. I changed the old-fashion farming ways. I planted orchards and raised bees. I diversified my crops. I—well—” she laughed hopefully for the first time—a laugh which brought a pang to his heart, for it was the old laugh. “I am not yet started in that, for I am so enthusiastic a farmer and poultry raiser and stock woman that I’ll talk shop all night if you let me. Anyway, they say I keep posted and up with the times, and I have time, too, for good reading.
“Hugh,” she said quickly, after awhile, “really I have thought of you often, but I will not deceive you. You have gone out of my life. I have heard enough—before you came—heard it, seen enough. In all our lives, our romances I mean, it is imagination that counts more than the reality. Common sense and farm work,” she said, “will cure it, and I—think—I know I am happier than if I were now married to you—to you as you are, Hugh,” she added more tenderly.
“But—but, Jennie, I’ll change; give me a chance.”
“Why, Hugh, that is what you had, and I mine. I have watched nature since I’ve been a farmer, and I notice she never gives but one chance. There are too many of her children that must have a chance.”
He turned with a rough laugh and oath and walked off.
“I’ve come home jus’ to make a fool of myself,” she heard him say with another oath.
But she did not pale even. She turned and walked in, the dog following her.
“I am so glad I saw him anyway,” she said, patting the dog’s head. “Now, I can forget him so easily. Oh, Rex, life—life—how strange it is, but we all have one chance. Oh, I am so glad I had mine, and it has given me this sweet home and you. For it were better to love a dog that is honest and true than a man who it not.”
BLUE JOHN.
A Mississippi planter, and a gentleman of the old school, sends me this one from a little town in the Delta: