“Oh yes,” Hoag answered, indifferently. “She's been powerfully worried over Jennie's death, an' Paul, somehow, seems to brace her up with his odd views in regard to a happy land. Maybe”—Hoag hesitated, and then pursued more confidently—“maybe if you sorter talked a little on that line yourself it would catch her fancy. Anything is fair in love an' war when a woman is clean upset like Eth' is.”
“I believe in religion,” the banker declared, quite gravely. “I always have a good word for it. I don't believe this world could get along without it. All of us at the bank are in some church or other. I'm a Baptist, you know; all my folks are of that persuasion. And my church has made me it's treasurer. First and last our bank handles a pile of its funds. If the heathen have to wait for it sometimes we get the interest on it. But, say, Mr. Hoag, I'm sort o' worried over this thing—I mean about this queer duck you've got working for you.”
“Well, don't let that bother you.” Hoag filled the awkward pause with a soft, satisfied chuckle. “Eth' understands what I want, and so does her ma. Both of 'em know I'd never give in to her marryin' such a—why, he belongs to the lowest stock this country ever produced—as nigh dirt-eaters as any folks you ever saw. He's picked up some learnin' out West, an' has got brains an' pluck; but no niece o' mine could tie herself to a bunch o' folks like that. Humph, I say—well, I reckon not! He'd not have the cheek to think of it. You leave the affair in my hands. I won't push matters now, but I will put in my oar at the right time.”
“Well, I don't want no woman coerced.” Peterson brightened even as he protested. “I don't want that exactly, but Miss Ethel is the girl I've been looking for. I can't get her out of my mind. She would be an ornament and a help to any rising man. I ought to marry; there is no sort of doubt on that line, and though I might look the field over she—well, she simply fills the bill, that's all. I'm going to erect a fine home on Peachtree Street, and I want her to preside over it.”
“An' I want a place to stop when I run down thar,” Hoag laughed. “You leave it to me.”
CHAPTER XV
JEFF WARREN and the two women of his family were on their way back to their former home. A wagon, a rickety affair on wabbly wheels, covered by a clay-stained canvas stretched over hoops, and drawn by a skeleton of a horse, contained all their earthly possessions. Peering under the hood of the wagon, an observer might see two musty straw mattresses, an old hair-covered trunk, a table, three chairs, a box of dishes, and a sooty collection of pots, pans, kettles, pails, and smoothing-irons. Carefully wrapped in bedquilts, and tied with ropes, was the household joy, a cottage-organ. Tethered to the wagon in the rear was a cow which tossed her head impatiently under the rope around her horns, and dismally mooed to her following calf.
Jeff now belonged to the shiftless class of small farmers that drifts from one landowner to another, renting a few acres on shares and failing on at least every other crop. The three members of the family were equal partners in misfortune; for both Mrs. Rundel and her sister quite frequently toiled in the fields, using the hoe, the scythe, the spade, and in emergencies, when Warren's rheumatism was at its worst, even the plow. Still of irascible temper, and grown more sensitive under adversity, Jeff had quarreled or fought with almost every man from whom he had rented land, until he now found few who would deal with him.