Meredith Nicholson

“ Phil had, by this time, considered the case from the changing viewpoints natural to the young mind. In that rosy light through which a girl of fifteen is apt to view life,—the first realizations of sex, the age of the first novels,—Phil had not been free from the contemplation of her mother as a romantic figure. For a woman to forsake a husband for a lover was not without precedents. Phil had dreamed over this a good deal, in an impersonal sort of way, and the unknown mother had been glorified in scenes of renunciation, following nobly the high call of a greater love. ”

“ A little cloud of dust rose in the hollow toward Turkey Run. It was undoubtedly big Jack Whittlesey, the sheriff. The idea of one man hunting another was repugnant to Phil to-day, in this bright, wakened world of green fields, cheery bird song and laughing waters. She ran down the hill to escape from the very thought of sheriffs and prisons, and set off for the creek, following the Montgomery-Holton fence toward the Holton barn, whither the music had lured her that night of the change o' the year when she had danced among the corn shocks. ”

“ The sight of Montgomery in its best clothes, showing its delight in optimism, had only aroused his contempt. He had been annoyed by Phil's manifestations of pleasure; she had laughed aloud once at a story, before the rest of the audience caught the point, and he felt that considerable patient labor would be required to smooth out Phil's provincial crudenesses.
Phil's spirits soared. The world was, indeed, a good place, and full of charity and kindness. Wayland Brown Bayless had said so; Mrs. John Newman King had done much to prove it. ”

“ You don't know what it has meant to know you—how thinking about you makes the day's work easier as I tramp these fields. I know I oughtn't to ask a girl like you to share a farmer's life, but I'll be so good to you, Phil! And I mean to go on and win. You've made the world a different place for me, Phil. I know what a poor clod I am, but I mean to study and to try and measure up to you."
"Cut out that last proposition, Fred! I'm the harum-scarumest girl on earth and I know it. I'd be a real handicap to you, or any other man. ”

“ She heard that other voice with its new and thrilling accents, that careless, light laugh with its gentle mockery. She was recalled from a long reverie by a question from Rose.
"How did you find the gathering of the clans at Amzi's?"
"Just about as cheerful as usual," replied Phil colorlessly.
"Amzi's seat will be in the front row of the heavenly choir-loft," observed Nan. "What he has taken from those women has given him a clear title to joys ineffable."
"Amy is not a mere man," said Phil; "he is a great soul." ”

“ You know I love Nan. No one was ever kinder to me than Nan—hardly you, even! And I don't want you to give her up; you need each other; you do understand each other! Oh, everything is so queer and wrong!"
"No, Phil; things are not as queer and wrong as they look. Don't get that idea into your head. Life isn't queer or wrong; life simply isn't as easy as it looks, and that's very different." ”

“ At two o'clock on the afternoon of the day following the return of Phil Kirkwood and her father from their camp on Sugar Creek, as Mr. Montgomery appeared upon the steps of the bank and gazed with his usual unconcern up and down Main Street, his spectacles pointed finally (or so it seemed) to the photographer's studio over the way. Although a slight mist was falling and umbrellas bobbed inanely in the fashion of umbrellas, Amzi in his seersucker coat was apparently oblivious of the weather's inclemency. ”

“ The world—things generally—what interests you and me; what interests Uncle Amy and Mr. Perry; the buzzings in all our noddles. Thousands of people, in towns just like Montgomery, live along some way or other, and most of them do the best they can, and keep out of jails and poorhouses, mostly, and nothing very important happens to them or has to. It always strikes me as odd how unimportant we all are. We're just us, and if God didn't make us very big or wise or good, why, there's nothing to be done about it. ”

“ Her Uncle Lawrence Hastings had undertaken to manage the dance and he glided away with her to the strains of the first waltz. Hastings boasted a velvet collar to his dress-coat, and the town had not yet ceased to marvel that fortune had sent to its door a gentleman so exquisite, so finished, so identified with the most fascinating of all the arts. Hastings had for the social affairs of Montgomery a haughty scorn. ”

“ It was ghastly that that man of all men should have stumbled into Amzi's house in that way. Nothing was ever nobler than the way your father bore it."
She knelt suddenly and clasped Phil in her arms as though to shield her from all the wrongs of the world. There were tears in Nan's eyes, unmistakably, when Phil stroked her cheek, and then for the first time with a sudden impulse Nan kissed her. Phil's intercourse with the Bartletts had been in the key of happy companionship, marked with a restraint that the girl respected and admired. ”

“ The crowd began to disperse. Most of those who had drawn their money waited to re-deposit it, and Amzi walked out upon the step to view the situation at the First National, to whose doors a great throng clung stubbornly. The marshal and a policeman were busily occupied in an effort to keep a way open for traffic. Observed by only a few idlers, Tom Kirkwood emerged from the First National's directors' room and walked across to where Amzi stood like a guardian angel before the door of Montgomery's Bank. ”

“ Waterman, "it would be the duty of all of us to help her; that would only be right. But even if it comes to that we should have to consider Phil, too. When you think of everything, our responsibility is much greater for Phil than for Lois. Phil is here; her life's before her; she's one of us, you know, Amzi."
"Right, Josie; you are mighty right. What you mean is that if it came to a question of Lois's starving in Europe and Phil's starving on our doorsteps, we'd help Phil first because she's right here under our noses. But I don't understand that Lois is starving; nor is Phil for that matter. ”

“ He would sell the place and invest the proceeds for Phil. He smiled ironically as he remembered the disparity between his own fortunes and those of his former wife. He did not resent her prosperity; he did not understand it; but if it was the way of the gods to visit fortune upon the unrighteous, so much the worse for the gods.
A brick walk curved round the house, and as he was about to step from it to the veranda he heard voices that came seemingly from the jutting corner of a wing that had been his library. ”

“ The town was so knit together, so like a big family, that Lois Montgomery's escapade was a tragedy at every hearth-side. It was immeasurably shocking that a young woman married to a reputable man, and with a child still toddling [Pg 18] after her, should have done this grievous thing. To say that she had always been flighty, and that it was what might have been expected of a woman as headstrong as she had been as a girl, was no mollification of the blow to the local conscience, acutely sensitive in all that pertained to the honor and sanctity of the marriage tie. And Jack Holton! ”

“ The Holtons are no good! There's a crooked streak in the whole lot. And all that's the matter with your blessed trio of aunts is their ambition to stand well with Mrs. William, and your precious uncles lean on the First National counter when they want to borrow money. But you'd think they'd have some respect for your father, for your uncle, for you!"
"Oh, well, it's all over now," replied Phil.
"It's a good thing you're the wise child you are! You understand perfectly that the Holtons are not for you in this world. ”

“ I mean Lois Kirkwood."
"Oh, Lois!" He spoke as though surprised that she should be chosen for particular attention, and his lip curled scornfully. "When a man goes wrong, Will, he pays for it. Take it from me that that's one gospel truth that I've proved to my entire satisfaction. It's queer, Will, how soon a bonfire burns out—the bigger the fire the quicker it goes. I went plum crazy about that girl. She'd married the one particular man on earth who was least likely to make her happy. ”

“ We're old comrades, you and I, Phil, and there can't be any shadow of a difference between us, now or ever. It's the simplest and easiest thing for you to go to your uncle's house, and we won't even consider the fact that your mother is there; we'll just assume that her being there is the most natural thing in the world, and that it's a matter of our common convenience for you to be there, too. You see how perfectly easy and natural it all comes about. ”

“ I always know when they've been putting you up to something. Come along now and sit down like a good old uncle and tell me what new idea has struck those foolish females. Sit down right there in your little chair, Amy; I'll let you off from that mussing if you tell the truth."
"You see, Phil," he began earnestly, "you've grown up. You're not a kid any more to chase cats and dogs through the court-house square, and flip on the interurbans, but a grown woman, and you've got to begin acting like one. ”

“ The dry stubble of the newly cut wheat was rough underfoot as she set off for Amzi's. There was much sowing and reaping in the world, she philosophized, and far too much chaff in the garnered grain! Life, that might be so simple if every one would only be a little bit reasonable, unfolded itself before her in dim, bewildering vistas.
Fred had started to meet her, and she saw his stalwart figure against the fading west.
"Mr. Montgomery is getting nervous about you; he said for you to hurry! The fact is that I bored him and he needs you to cheer him up."
"Which is fishing," Phil replied. ”

“ Phil waved her hand in the direction of the table where the Bartletts, her father, and Amzi were seating themselves, and when she looked round at Holton, she found his eyes bent upon her with a fair imitation of wistfulness and longing which in previous encounters of this sort he had found effective.
"I don't believe you realize how beautiful you are. I've been over the world a good deal and there's no one anywhere who touches you. There are lots of nice and pretty girls, of course, but you are different; you are a beautiful woman! ”

“ Could anything be more beautiful? The ayes seem to have it; the ayes have it, as I used to be fond of saying when I was boss of the Philomathean. I wish now I'd taken the domestic science course more seriously and spent less time in the gymnasium. But thus it is we live and learn."
Phil's tone made rebuke difficult. He loved her foolishness just as her Uncle Amzi did—just as every one did except her aunts, for whom the affected stiltedness of her speech was merely a part of her general deplorable unconventionality. ”

“ Phil and Perry moved off together and Amzi walked along beside Fred across a field of wheat stubble toward the orchard that stretched away on a slope that corresponded to the rise of Listening Hill in the highway. He talked of fruit-growing in which he appeared to be deeply interested, and declared that there was no reason why fruit should be only an insect-blighted by-product of such farms as his; that intelligent farmers were more and more taking it up. He confessed his firm belief in scientific farming in all its branches. Most men in small towns keep some touch with the soil. ”