John Stevens' Courtship. Gates Susa Young

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      No wonder, then, that the night after the return from the celebration in Cottonwood Canyon, a dozen young people sat in the comfortable rush-bottomed chairs within the opened portals; and while Aunt Clara moved quietly among them, putting the finishing touches to her evening work, they talked with excited voices of the impending danger.

      Aunt Clara saw that something was necessary to drive away the alarm. Going into her bedroom, she drew out six large skeins of woolen yarn.

      "Here, girls, I have a chore for you to do. I want this yarn wound off for it is to be knitted up at once. Boys, you can help by holding the yarn nicely and properly, and the one who is done the soonest shall have one of the dough-nuts left over from my pic-nic."

      "What's this for; to knit stockings for our soldiers?" asked Diantha, who was, as usual, the center of the group.

      "It's to knit socks for the Bishop and the boys; I am sure I don't know, nor do I care, whether they go out to fight as the defenders of our country or not. It will be all right whatever they do. Didn't you hear President Young say that God would fight our battles for us? Let that be sufficient."

      "Don't you think we are going to have a war, Aunt Clara?" ventured timid Millie Howe, who was one of the group.

      "No, I don't. Of course I don't know all the facts of the case, but I have heard President Young say many times since we entered the Valley that we should not have to fight any more battles, for God would fight them for us. I have perfect faith in his word."

      "Nevertheless, Aunt Clara," said a voice at the open window, "I want to borrow your father's old Revolutionary musket, which you keep hanging up over your bed."

      Two or three girls screamed at the suddenness of the sound, and the young men started in their seats.

      "Oh, John Stevens, why do you frighten us like that?" called Ellen. "Come here and give an account of yourself. Where have you been since you left us in the canyon, and what did you leave us so unceremoniously for?"

      "Business, business," answered the young man, entering the room as he spoke. "What are you all doing here, winding yarn as peacefully and calmly as if there were nothing of more importance on earth."

      "Well, is there anything of more importance, John?" asked Tom Allen. "Think of it, man, holding yarn for the prettiest girl in Salt Lake. I know what ails you, you have no yarn to hold. Here, Aunt Clara, give him some yarn to hold, and there is Ellen. She can wind up that slow-moving tongue of his at the same time."

      "The yarn around and round she slung

      To make him loose his sluggish tongue,"

      cried Charlie Rose, tauntingly.

      "Oh, John, do tell us the news. Don't bother with Tom and Charlie; tell us the news," Ellen persisted.

      "If Aunt Clara will give me one of her dough-nuts, I will tell all the news I have to tell."

      "Why don't you say that you will tell all there is to tell, John; you are so non-committal?" chimed in Diantha, who understood how much and how little might be expected in the way of telling or talking from John Stevens.

      Aunt Clara went out and brought in a pan of dough-nuts and a pitcher of milk, which kept the young people too busy for a few minutes to talk anything but nonsense.

      "If I could find a girl that could make as good dough-nuts as you can, Aunt Clara," said Tom Allen, with his mouth half-full of cake, "I would marry her tomorrow."

      "Would you, indeed," cried Ellen Tyler. "Then you must learn that catching comes before hanging. I made those dough-nuts myself, young impudence, while Aunt Clara was fitting my dress to wear up in the canyon."

      "Ellie, I shall certainly have to take you as my wife. You know that I have already been engaged several times. But you shall have the privilege of being my very last sweetheart. The last is best, you know, of all the game. You are second to none in the matter of dough-nuts. Please, Ellie, give me another fried cake."

      "Another plate-full, you mean. I certainly shall not accept your offer, for if I did I should have nothing else to do the rest of my life but fry dough-nuts for you."

      "Ellie, haven't you heard that the nearest way to a man's heart is – "

      "Oh, don't say such horrid things. We all know where your heart lies, Tom, so don't bother to tell us," said Dian, with a disgusted air.

      "What on earth is the matter with me," began Tom, rising in mock indignation from his chair, but the girls cried out in dismay, and John Stevens, who sat nearest the offending youth, pulled him down into his seat again, and growled at him in so low a voice that no one but Tom could hear him, "There is nothing the matter with you, only you make yourself a little too prominent." And John indicated his friend's adipose with a slight blow. Tom was so tickled with the joke that he determined to repeat it even if the girls should be more shocked than ever, but Aunt Clara came in and asked John to tell them the news of the army.

      "Yes, there is really an army en route for Utah, but they will forever be en route, either to Utah," after a pause, he added under his breath, "or to hell."

      "What are they coming here for?" asked Aunt Clara, again.

      "No one knows, unless it is to rob and murder us again, as mobs have tried to do so often before."

      "And will they do it?" breathlessly asked Ellen.

      "Not this year," grimly answered John. "There is only one entrance into this valley, through the canyon. And forty men could hold an army at bay for a year in our canyons."

      "But, John, where are they? and how many are there of them? and when will they get here? and who is going out to meet them and fight them, and – "

      "Well, Ellie, we shall give you the credit of asking more questions in a minute than even President Young could answer in a day. Say, boys, where is Henry Boyle?"

      "Henry Boyle, did you say, Henry Boyle?" and Tom Allen, who had thus repeated the question, began to laugh, and as he laughed he fairly tumbled off his chair in his efforts to control his merriment. The others smiled and some even laughed aloud to see fat Tom laugh, for his merriment was always as contagious as a clown's.

      "Do tell us what is the matter with Henry Boyle?" snapped Diantha, at last, worn out by his long continued, mysterious laughter.

      "Oh, dear, I forget all about it, this war talk drove it all out of my head. But it is too ridiculous for anything," and he went off into another peal of laughter and exhausted himself, before they could calm him down to tell his story.

      "You see, early this morning, far too early, it could not have been more than half an hour after sunrise, I was just taking my last beauty sleep, when a little boy rapped at my door; and when I succeeded in tearing myself from the arms of Morpheus sufficiently to find out what he wanted, he said Brother Boyle wanted to see me. I got myself over to Henry's and on entering the room," here another burst of laughter rendered Tom speechless for a moment, "there lay Henry on his bed, his legs stretched out and covered with his hard shrunken buckskin pants. I don't know where he got those pants, but they were not half tanned, and yesterday after that fall in the lake with them, fringes and all, he slept in them, for he said he could not get them off; and he had to let Charlie Rose drive the folks down in the wagon, while he coaxed another family to let him travel down in the bottom of their wagon, for he couldn't bend his knees. He got on to his bed someway, and there he lies. He wanted me to help him out of his scrape, for he says he can СКАЧАТЬ