Thus it was that every day, rain or shine, until the day of her wedding, Laura Nesbit drove her dog cart to the Adamses before the men went to their work and took little Kenyon home with her and brought him back in the evening. And always she took him from the arms of Grant–Grant, red-headed, freckled, blue-eyed, who was hardening into manhood and premature maturity so fast that he did not realize the change that it made in his face. It grew set, but not hard, a woman’s tenderness crept into the features, and with that tenderness came at times a look of petulant impatience. It was a sad face–a sadly fanatic face–yet one that lighted with human feeling under a smile.
Little by little, meeting daily–often meeting morning and evening, Grant and Laura established a homely, wholesome, comfortable relation.
One evening while Laura was waiting for Tom Van Dorn and Grant was waiting for Kenyon she and Grant sitting upon the veranda steps of the Nesbit home, looked into the serene, wide lawn that topped the hill above the quiet town. They could look across the white and green of the trees and houses, across the prosperous, solid, red roofs of the stone and brick stores and offices on Market Street, into the black smudge of smoke and the gray, unpainted, sprawling rows of ill-kept tenements around the coal mines, that was South Harvey. They could see even then the sky stains far down the Wahoo Valley, where the villages of Foley and Magnus rose and duplicated the ugliness of South Harvey.
The drift of the conversation was personal. The thoughts of youth are largely personal. The universe is measured by one’s own thumb in the twenties. “Funny, isn’t it,” said 106Grant, playing with a honeysuckle vine that climbed the post beside him, “I guess I’m the only one of the old crowd who is outlawed in overalls. There’s Freddie Kollander and Nate Perry and cousin Morty and little Joe Calvin, all up town counterjumping or working in offices. The girls all getting married.” He paused. “But as far as that goes I’m making more money than any of the fellows!” He paused again a moment and added as he gazed moodily into the pillars of smoke rising above South Harvey, “Gee, but I’ll miss you when you’re gone–”
The girl’s silvery laugh greeted his words. “Now, Grant,” she said, “where do you think I’m going? Why, Tom and I will be only a block from here–just over on Tenth Street in the Perry House.”
Grant grinned as he shook his head. “You’re lost and gone forever, just the same, Miss Clementine. In about three years I’ll probably be that ‘red-headed boss carpenter in the mine─let me see, what’s his name?’”
“Oh, Grant,” scoffed the girl. She saw that his heart was sadder than his face.
She took courage and said: “Grant, you never can know how often I think of you–how much I want you to win everything worth while in this world, how much I want you to be happy–how I believe in you and–and–bet on you, Grant–bet on you!”
Grant did not answer her. Presently he looked up and over the broad valley below them. The sun behind the house was touching the limestone ledge far across the valley with golden rays. The smoke from South Harvey on their right was lighted also. The youth looked into the smoke. Then he turned his eyes back from the glowing smoke and spoke.
“This is how I look at it. I don’t mean you’re any different from any one else. What I was trying to say was that I’m the only one of our old crowd in the High School you know that used to have parties and go together in the old days–I’m the only one that’s wearing overalls, and my way is down there”; he nodded his head toward the mines and smelters and factories in the valley.