Prudence Says So Part 35

"Yes. Jim was wearing his new gray suit and looked very nice. I've never been out to their home. Is it very nice?"

"Um, swell!" This was from Carol, Lark being less slangily inclined.

"They have about sixteen rooms, and two maids--they call them 'girls'--and electric lights, and a private water supply, and--and--horses, and cows--oh, it's great! We've always been awfully fond of Jim. The nicest thing about him is that he always takes a girl home when he goes to cla.s.s things and socials. I can't endure a fellow who walks home by himself. Jim always asks Larkie and me first, and if we are taken he gets some one else. Most boys, if they can't get first choice, pike off alone."

"Here, Carol, you have my petticoat. This is yours. You broke the drawstring, and forgot--"

"Oh, mercy, so I did. Here, auntie, pin it over for me, will you? I'll take the string along and put it in to-night."

"Now, Carol," said Aunt Grace, smiling. "Be easy on him. He's so nice it would be a shame to--"

Carol threw up her eyes in horror. "I am shocked," she cried. Then she dimpled. "But I wouldn't hurt Jim for anything. I'm very fond of him. Do you really think there are any--er--indications--"

"Oh, I don't know anything about it. I'm just judging by the rest of the community."

Lark was performing the really difficult feat of putting on and b.u.t.toning her slippers standing on one foot for the purpose and stooping low. Her face was flushed from the exertion.

"Do you think he's crazy about you, Carol?" she inquired, rather seriously, and without looking up from the shoe she was so laboriously b.u.t.toning.

"Oh, I don't know. There are a few circ.u.mstances which seem to point that way. Take that new gray suit for instance. Now you know yourself, Lark, he didn't need a new gray suit, and when a man gets a brand-new suit for no apparent reason, you can generally put it down that he's waxing romantic. Then there's his mother--she's begun telling me all his good points, and how cute he was when he was born, and she showed me one of his curls and a lot of his baby pictures--it made Jim wild when he came in and caught her at it, and she tells me how good he is and how much money he's got. That's pointed, very. But I must confess," she concluded candidly, "that Jim himself doesn't act very loverly."

"He thinks lots of you, I know," said Lark, still seriously. "Whenever he's alone with me he praises you every minute of the time."

"That's nothing. When he's alone with me he praises you all the time, too. Where's my hat, Lark? I'll bet Connie wore it, the little sinner!

Now what shall I do?"

"You left it in the barn yesterday,--don't you remember you hung it on the harness hook when we went out for eggs, and--"

"Oh, so I did. There comes Connie now." Carol thrust her head out of the window. "Connie, run out to the barn and bring my hat, will you? It's on the harness hook. And hurry! Don't stop to ask questions, just trot along and do as you're told."

Carol returned again to her toilet. "Well, I guess I have time to powder after all. I don't suppose we'll need to take any money, auntie, do you?

We won't be able to spend it in the country."

"I think you'd better take a little. They might drive to town, or go to a social, or something."

"Can't do it. Haven't a cent."

"Well, I guess I can lend you a little," was the smiling reply. It was a standing joke in the family that Carol had been financially hard pressed ever since she began using powder several years previous.

"Are you fond of Jim, Carol?" Lark jumped away backward in the conversation, asking the question gravely, her eyes upon her sister's face.

"Hum! Yes, I am," was the light retort. "Didn't Prudence teach us to love everybody?"

"Don't be silly. I mean if he proposes to you, are you going to turn him down, or not?"

"What would you advise, Lark?" Carol's brows were painfully knitted.

"He's got five hundred acres of land, worth at least a hundred an acre, and a lot of money in the bank,--his mother didn't say how much, but I imagine several thousand anyhow. And he has that nice big house, and an auto, and--oh, everything nice! Think of the fruit trees, Larkie! And he's good-looking, too. And his mother says he is always good natured even before breakfast, and that's very exceptional, you know! Very! I don't know that I could do much better, do you, auntie? I'm sure I'd look cute in a sun-bonnet and ap.r.o.n, milking the cows! So, boss, so, there, now! So, boss!"

"Why, Carol!"

"But there are objections, too. They have pigs. I can't bear pigs!

Pooooey, pooooey! The filthy little things! I don't know,--Jim and the gray suit and the auto and the cows are very nice, but when I think of Jim and overalls and pigs and onions and freckles I have goose flesh.

Here they come! Where's that other slipper? Oh, it's clear under the bed!" She wriggled after it, coming out again breathless. "Did I rub the powder all off?" she asked anxiously.

The low honk of the car sounded outside, and the twins dumped a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of toilet articles into the battered suit-case and the tattered hand-bag. Carol grabbed her hat from Connie, leisurely strolling through the hall with it, and sent her flying after her gloves. "If you can't find mine, bring your own," she called after her.

Aunt Grace and Connie escorted them triumphantly down the walk to the waiting car where the young man in the new sentimental gray suit stood beside the open door. His face was boyishly eager, and his eyes were full of a satisfaction that had a sort of excitement in it, too. Aunt Grace looked at him and sighed. "Poor boy," she thought. "He is nice!

Carol is a mean little thing!"

He smiled at the twins impartially. "Shall we flip a coin to see who I get in front?" he asked them, laughing.

His mother leaned out from the back seat, and smiled at the girls very cordially. "Hurry, twinnies," she said, "we must start, or we'll be late for supper. Come in with me, won't you, Larkie?"

"What a greasy schemer she is," thought Carol, climbing into her place without delay.

Jim placed the battered suit-case and the tattered bag beneath the seat, and drew the rug over his mother's knees. Then he went to Lark's side, and tucked it carefully about her feet.

"It's awfully dusty," he said. "You shouldn't have dolled up so. Shall I put your purse in my pocket? Don't forget you promised to feed the chickens--I'm counting on you to do it for me."

Then he stepped in beside Carol, laughing into her bright face, and the good-bys rang back and forth as the car rolled away beneath the heavy arch of oak leaves that roofed in Maple Avenue.

The twins fairly reveled in the glories of the country through the golden days that followed, and enjoyed every minute of every day, and begrudged the hours they spent in sleep. The time slipped by "like banana skins," declared Carol crossly, and refused to explain her comparison. And the last day of their visit came. Supper was over at seven o'clock, and Lark said, with something of wistfulness in her voice, "I'm going out to the orchard for a farewell weep all by myself.

And don't any of you disturb me,--I'm so ugly when I cry."

So she set out alone, and Jim, a little awkwardly, suggested that Carol take a turn or so up and down the lane with him. Mrs. Forrest stood at the window and watched them, tearful-eyed, but with tenderness.

"My little boy," she said to herself, "my little boy. But she's a dear, sweet, pretty girl."

In the meantime, Jim was acquitting himself badly. His face was pale. He was nervous, ill at ease. He stammered when he spoke. Self-consciousness was not habitual to this young man of the Iowa farm. He was not the awkward, ignorant, gangling farm-hand we meet in books and see on stages. He had attended the high school in Mount Mark, and had been graduated from the state agricultural college with high honors. He was a farmer, as his father had been before him, but he was a farmer of the new era, one of those men who takes plain farming and makes it a profession, almost a fine art. Usually he was self-possessed, a.s.sertive, confident, but, in the presence of this sparkling twin, for once he was abashed.

Carol was in an ecstasy of delight. She was not a man-eater, perhaps, but she was nearly romance-mad. She thought only of the wild excitement of having a sure-enough lover, the hurt of it was yet a little beyond her grasp. "Oh, Carol, don't be so sweet," Lark had begged her once.

"How can the boys help being crazy about you, and it hurts them." "It doesn't hurt anything but their pride when they get snubbed," had been the laughing answer. "Do you want to break men's hearts?" "Well,--it's not at all bad for a man to have a broken heart," the irrepressible Carol had insisted. "They never amount to anything until they have a real good disappointment. Then they brace up and amount to something.

See? I really think it's a kindness to give them a heart-break, and get them started."

The callow youths of Mount Mark, of the Epworth League, and the college, were almost unanimous in laying their adoration at Carol's feet. But Carol saw the elasticity, the buoyancy, of loves like these, and she couldn't really count them. She felt that she was ripe for a bit of solid experience now, and there was nothing callow about Jim--he was solid enough. And now, although she could see that his feelings stirred, she felt nothing but excitement and curiosity. A proposal, a real one!

It was imminent, she felt it.

"Carol," he began abruptly, "I am in love."

"A-are you?" Carol had not expected him to begin in just that way.

"Yes,--I have been for a long time, with the sweetest and dearest girl in the world. I know I am not half good enough for her, but--I love her so much that--I believe I could make her happy."

"D-do you?" Carol was frightened. She reflected that it wasn't so much fun as she had expected. There was something wonderful in his eyes, and in his voice. Maybe Lark was right,--maybe it did hurt! Oh, she really shouldn't have been quite so nice to him!

"She is young--so am I--but I know what I want, and if I can only have her, I'll do anything I--" His voice broke a little. He looked very handsome, very grown-up, very manly. Carol quivered. She wanted to run away and cry. She wanted to put her arms around him and tell him she was very, very sorry and she would never do it again as long as she lived and breathed.

"Of course," he went on, "I am not a fool. I know there isn't a girl like her in ten thousand, but--she's the one I want, and--Carol, do you reckon there is any chance for me? You ought to know. Lark doesn't have secrets from you, does she? Do you think she'll have me?"