The Jucklins. Opie Percival Read

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      "This will do, though it is pretty light. Raised on an old hill."

      He sat down and continued to pull at his pipe, though the fire was out. He leaned with his elbow on the table; he moved as if his position were uncomfortable; he got up, went to the window, looked out, came back, resumed his seat and after looking at the floor for a few moments said that he thought that it must be going to rain.

      "Perhaps so," I replied, "but that's not what you wanted to say."

      He gave me a sharp glance, looked down and then asked: "How do you know?"

      "I know because I can see and because I'm not a fool."

      "Anybody ever call you a fool?" he asked, with a sad laugh. He leaned far back and looked up at the clapboards.

      "That has nothing to do with it, Alf. Pardon me. Mr. Jucklin, I should have said. The truth is, it seems that I have known you a long time."

      "And when you feel that way about a man," he quickly spoke up, "you make no mistake in accepting him as a friend. Call me Alf. What's your first name?" I told him, and he added: "And I'll call you Bill. No; the truth is I didn't care to say that I thought it was going to rain; I don't give a snap for rain, except the rain that is pouring on my heart. You remember that girl that came out upon the gallery. I know you do, for no man could forget her. You know that Guinea asked me if Millie was at home. Well, that was Millie Lundsford, the old General's daughter. We have lived close together all our lives, but I have never known her very well, and even now I wouldn't go there on a dead-set visit. She and Guinea went off to school together and are good friends. Guinea tries to plague me about her at times, not knowing that I really love her. I couldn't go off to school, didn't care any too much for education, but since that girl came home and I got better acquainted with her I have felt that I would give half my life to know books, so that I could talk to her; and since then I have been studying, with Guinea to help me. And you don't know how glad I was when I heard that you had come here to teach school, for I want to study under you. But secretly," he added. "I can't go to the school-house; I don't want her to know that I am so ignorant."

      I reached over and took hold of his hand. "Alf, to teach you shall be one of my duties. But don't put yourself down as ignorant, for you are not."

      He grasped my hand, and, looking straight into my eyes, said: "I wish I knew as much and was as good-looking as you. Then I wouldn't be afraid to go to her and ask her to let me win her love, if I could. To-morrow you go over to the General's, pretending that you want to get his advice about the school, and I will go with you. Hang it, Bill, you may be in love one of these days."

      "Why, Alf, I don't see why either of us should be afraid to go to the General's house. Go? Of course, we will. But you make me laugh when you say that if you were only as good-looking as I am. Let me tell you something." I briefly told him the uneventful story of my life, that ridicule had found me while yet I was a toddler and had held me up as its target. "You might have grown too fast," he remarked when I had concluded, "but you have caught up with yourself. To tell you the truth, you would be picked out from among a thousand men. Where did you get all those books? I don't see how you brought them with you in that trunk, and with your other things."

      "The other things didn't take up much room," I answered, and, turning to the books, I began to tell him something about them, but I soon saw that his mind was far away. "Yes, we will go over there to-morrow," said I, and his mind flew back.

      "And walk right in as if we owned half the earth," said he, but I knew that he felt not this lordly courage, knew that already he was quaking. "Oh, I'll go right in with you," he said. "You lead the way and I'll be with you."

      When I had gone to bed a remark that he had made was sweeping like a wind through my mind: "Hang it, Bill, you may be in love one of these days." I was already in love—in love with Guinea.