"No, she's got some, but she never gave me one— I never asked for it. They are not good enough, nohow. They make her look too glum and pinched about the eyes. To know what she is like, you have to see her and hear her talk, or read the Bible out loud at prayer-time. She isn't big; her hands and feet are nearly as little as yours are; but above all else in the world, kid, she is good. The neighbors all love her. She waits on them when they are sick. Away late at night not long ago a farmer come to get her to go stay with his sick wife, and Tilly—that's her name—was away till sunup, and then came home and milked the cows and worked around the kitchen. She needs a long rest and she shall have it. I'll see that she gets it, and plenty of clothes and pretty things, besides. She is having an awfully hard time and that is one reason I don't feel so bad about asking her to—to come with just me. I am going into partnership with Sam later, and he and I will both make more money and I'll buy things for her. She plays an organ. I'll get her one. She shall tote the pocket-book, too. She has been skimped all her life. I know. I've had my eyes open up there. She never buys a thing, even a bit of ribbon, without her old daddy fingering it and calling her down for spending money for show, and it was her money, too, bless your life! She sells butter and eggs, takes them to the store herself. She has a little garden-patch all her own, and I've seen her out in it even in the rain, picking beans and peas to sell."
"If she is like that"—Dora was precociously and pessimistically wise for one so young, the fact being due, no doubt, to the tutelage of the two worldly women who were her sole companions—"if she is like that, it looks like some lazy feller would have got her before this. Aunt Jane says it takes money and clothes and lots of things to keep any man coming regular."
"There is—there was another fellow," John put in, unctuously, "but she turned him down. Lord! Lord! it broke him all to pieces! She just somehow couldn't tie to him. She told me so out of her own mouth."
"What is she like?" Dora then demanded. "What does she look like?"
"Don't ask me," John smiled. "I can't tell you. When we walk together she strikes me about here," his hand on his left shoulder. "She has blue eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks, but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them off. Folks don't say she is pretty—even Sam don't; but why I can't see, for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her."
"Well, I won't tell— I won't tell," Dora promised, returning with lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his empyrean.
Here a voice sounded from the window of Mrs. Trott's room up-stairs.
"Dora, is that John down there?"
"Yes'm. He's just got back."
"Well, tell him to come up here right away."