Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 102, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1913 — ON THE LONG ROAD [ARTICLE]

ON THE LONG ROAD

He Was Rough, but of Her Own People, Not Like the Other Kind. I By LOUISE MARRIFIELD. “Did ye ask Evalora?” • Oliver looked down at the white clover springing up through the chips ih front of the sawmill, and marked patterns with the butt of his ox goad. “Not directly, but she knows what I mean all right, Mr. Kinnecott.” "What do ye mean, to put It straight?” Old Steve Kinnecott shot a shqpwd glance from the golden shadows of the mill at the big overgrown youngster. His hair was tawny yellow and needed .cutting. His face and neck looked tanned almost a brick red under his wide brimmed flopping straw hat. Behind him stood the yoke of oxen, with patient lowered heads and switching tails. He had come down after a load of slabs fyom the hill farm. It was a mighty good proposition, that hill farm. Steve knew the value of every acre on it, and its rich wood lots. Evalora could do a sight worse, but would she think so? Since she had had the school training down at . the county seat, she had different ideas. Would the hill farm and her old. sweetheart appeal to her as love's ful- > fllment?

“I just mean I want her to marry me, sir,” Bald Oliver, a bit throatily. “Then I tell you what, boy.” Old Steve’s gray eyes twinkled. He shuffled forward into the wide arched entrance to the mill, and blinked at the aunlikht like some mole. “You take the long way home this trip. I ain’t got a mite of objections to you if you can get her." The long way home! Oliver curled his whip out to the oxen, and took the steep hill road. He knew what her father meant She was up at the big hotel teaching some children in one of the rich city families. He had seen her only at church in the valley on Sundays, only caught a few words with her in the shadow of the pillared porch afterwards. And it had been a whole year since he had kissed her goodby down under the pines. He wondered If she remembered. Not that she had promised anything; but sometimes he had almost kept the memory of her kiss as a promise. It was two miles and a half up to the hotel. Leisurely he walked it, with the slow-going oxen and a load of rust colored cedar slabs. Several times he he had to stop and turn to one side at the sound of a horn. Once he thought he recognized Evalora in one of the roadsters.

He went forward steadily, knowing Just wh„t old Steve had meant when he had told him to take the long road. If Evalora could stand it to see him drive up to the big summer hotel with slabs and the oxen, in his brown jeans and high boots, she would take the long road for life with him that way. There would be no pretense, no compromise. She would take him just as he was.

When he reached the bend, the long vine covered verandas came in view, the tall white chimneys, and many gables. A large space had been cleared in the virgin forest of the mountainside to make a fitting Bite* for the hotel. Oliver had never seen this since its completion. Now he surveyed it with calm, interested eyes, its golf course clear down to Peck’s brook, its Italian gardens that cut up the foreground, the stables and tennis courts, everything that made up Evalora’s everyday life that summer, even though she was merely a summer governess.

And suddenly, as he turned up the curving drive, he saw her. She was on the veranda at a little table with two children. That veranda looked like a distant flower-bed to him, with all its daintily clad women and young girls, but he could pick our Evalora. And he heard the boy call out: “Oh, look at the oxen!” Everybody looked at the oxen, and at their boyish driver. He stopped at the turn of the drive and waited, looking up at Evalora. Would she take the challenge, and come to him before them all? Just then a car made the sharp turn at the bend in the forest road, and he heard the cries of warning. Now Bvalora had risen, and was running down the steps towards him. He lifted his hat to greet her Just as the car ■truck the heavy wood wagon broadsides. It swung about, tangled up with the terrified, backing animals, and the boy went down in the wreckage. “Of course, it was my fault. I’ll pay for him here at the hotel.” Evalora looked up at the owner of the car. She knew him. Every day of her stay at the hotel he had done his best to make her appreciate the value of his very existence. He was young and from a good-sized town In the middle of the sate. He spent money freely. He had been far too generous In his offers of motor drives, ■he had thought, to the little oountry governess of his sister’s children. But In his way, she knew he tried to be, as he would have said, on the level. He did admire her frankly, and took the only way he knew of letting her ifcnow it.. Now he stood looking down at her. the center of the gathered crowd around the ox driver on the ground. He felt snubbed and bothered, seeing that rough head on the girl's dainty White linen Skirt, watching her stop {the flow of blood on his hetd with her jrilk scarf. U was all right to be hu-

mane; but she needn't make herself conspicuous, and his own anatomy felt fairly well paired from the accident, quite enough to demand sympathy. ' “I don’t think he would want to go to the hotel, Mr. Dixon," said Evalora, flushing slightly, but speaking as old Steve’s daughter should. "He’s an old friend of ours' and a neighbor’s boy. I wish you would plase take him home, tor me, and some one look after the oxen. Then you can settle with him yourself for the wagon and slabs.” “Well, if you say so, Miss Kinnecott—”

“I do say so. I’m going with you to look after him." It was a strange drive over the long road. Tom Dixon at the wheel, and Evalora looking after the unconscious youngster. Once she directed him to turn and make for a doctor’s house down the road. They took him along with them up to Oliver’s farm. "Anything more I can do?” Tom asked, after he had waited for the doctor’s verdict, and left a check that covered the damage. "Can I drive you back, Miss Evalora?" Evalora stood at the kitchen door. Beside her the double hollyhocks grew as tall as herself. It Beemed as if they turned their ruby hearts to her in welcome. Her hair was rumpled and wavy, her cheeks-flushed, her sleeves rolled high to the elbow. “I don’t think I’d better go back, thanks,” she said, happily. “If you take the doctor with you, and stop at the sawmill and tell father what’s happened, he’ll come up and help, too.” "I don’t think it’s necessary, all this fuss. He’s all right now,” said Tom, sulkily. : '

“I know," Evalora returned, shyly, “but you see, he’s our own .folks, and we like to look after him.” She waited until the buzz and hum of the motor had died away far down the hill road before she went back to the couch where they had put Oliver. He was bandaged until he looked like a turbanned Hindoo, but he smiled up at her.

"I heard what you told him, Evar lora.”

“Well, that’s just what father’d say, isn’t it?” She pulled a blue Bhade down to keep off the late afternoon sunlight. "Sit down here,” said Oliver. "I want to tell you why I went up there today on the long road." Evalora said nothing. She took the low rocker beside him and lingered the pieced courthouse steps quilt on the bed. There were some pieces of her dresses there when she had waited for Oliver down at the sawmill on the way to school. He had always carried her little tin lunch pall those days. Sometimes they had stopped at the bars lower down, and “peeked" Inside to see what surprise her mother had slipped in, a berry turnover or a doughnut with Jelly Inßide. She shared her treasures with him then. Then had come her schooling, first at the high school in a nearby town, and later up at Normal. She had slipped out of his reach for a little while. It had been this summer at the big hotel that had taught her where life ran in sweetest places, and she had tired of all the shams and petty battles of that daily round. Life was what one made it, and the makings lay in one’s owq heart, as Oliver would have put it. She could have her books and music up at the hill farm, with peace and plenty and —him. “I know why you came,” she whispered, “Just to get me.” “Would you have come along if I hadn’t got all smashed up?” There was a whimsical touch of longing in his tone. “Would you, girl?” He reached out one arm towards her, and drew her to him. “It’s a rough road to travel, the long one, but I’m just starved for you, Evalora.- I know I ain’t the sort of fellow you ought to marry, but —” Her hand was pressed firmly over his lips. “I don’t like the other kind,” she said, softly. (Copyright, 1918, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)