r868.]
DALLAS GALBRAITH.
bly in_ earnest in work or fun: took pleasure in contrasting their nasal drawl with his free, sonorous voice. Galbraith’s tones, by the way, were remarkable in their sweep and sweetness of intonation: one reason why Manasquan people were always thoroughly awake when near him, and, perhaps, why they were attracted to him. The old man went on calling to him as he crossed the field, chafiing him, and Dallas shouted back answers to his jokes ; not very witty, perhaps, on either side, but enough to make them both laugh, being in the humor for it. “Vhat is the meaning of this holi day rig?” scanning Galbraith’s suit of blue flannel, cut in a half-sailor fashion. “ A present from Laddoun, eh ?” “ No, I bought it with my own money ;
23
brown hair till it was like shiny satin folded about her head. George Lad doun would pull it down, when he came, most likely. There was a certain quiet positivism in her round, solid little per son, in the very bow of her ribbons, that irritated him through all of his passion ate love. “ It’s a hint of backbone, that don’t belong to your nature, Lizzy,” he said. “ What does a woman want with backbone ?” She was very anxious about this defect of hers, as Dallas found out ; for he was the only one to whom she spoke of it. “ It is the habit of teaching so long that has made me dogmatic,” she said, and made constant humble efforts to cure herself of it, for George’s pleasure.
She had been teaching in the woods
Elizabeth Byrne planned and made it,”
school-house a good many years : sewing with a complacent glance downwards. “ I between times, boarding with one old rather like my looks in it. I am going farmer's wife and another. Meantime the little brown Byrne house and the land to the house now. She’s there.” “ It is well for you that Laddoun’s lay unoccupied, just as her father left wife is what she is, Dallas. You'll be ‘ them. But when she found she was thrown into the machinery of that house going to marry George Laddoun (people a good deal, and George—is uncertain. said, at first, Jim Van Zeldt, but Lizzy But Lizzy-—well, Lizzy’s temper is like knew better), she began to use the little the honey off of buckwheat ; it’s a rough store of money she had laid by to repair flavor, but its sweet and warranted to the old homestead, and make it fit for keep. She’s the surest friend you’ve his home. If it had been a palace, she
got, Dallas.
And you have more than
thought, it would better have suited that
you know, my lad,” laughing significantly as he nodded and drove off. “I know what Lizzy is,” said Dallas to himself. He had a fancy that to-mor row would be the beginning of a new and the best chapter in his life. George was uncertain in temper, and he was necessarily a good deal in his power. But Lizzy—- But she would be waiting in the door for him, and he was half an hour
princely young fellow. Dallas had helped her tack carpets, put hinges on doors, weed the garden beds, hang the calico curtains. She forgot that he was not a woman, sometimes, and talked to him as if he had been. The consequence was, that Galbraith often wished that Lad doun knew the girl as well as he Cid, and so would be more just to her and tender. She had an hour or two for him now, before George came. She had a bottle of wine to give her lover, but she and Dallas were going to have a cozy cup of tea together. She had a surprise for
late ; he started at a full run across the
stubble-field to the woods which lay be tween him and the house. Father Kimball had said it was wed ding weather; and Elizabeth had the same fancy when she came to the door to look after Dallas, and felt as if she had
stepped into a bath of warm, sweet-scent ed sunshine. She had been too busy all day to look out, but now her house was in order ; she had bathed and put on her stifl', new white dress, and smoothed her
him.
One room, and that the one with
the widest outlook from the windows and the tightest-fitting window-frames (which means much on this windy coast), she had set apart for the lonely boy. “ I’ll not have him sleeping like a wild beast in the woods any longer," she told Lad
