FullReads

“I know it,” he broke out, “I know it; you can’t tell me nothin’ about it. I thought it all over more’n a hundred times lately. I could bite my tongue off for sayin’ what I did to her, and spilin’ her visit, but it’s done now and I can’t help it, and I’ve got to stay here and bear it.”

“No, Jim, don’t stay here. So long as she sees you around here she’ll be unhappy, and you will be equally miserable. Go away from here; find work somewhere else.”

“When?” he said, quietly.

“Now; right away; before she comes back at Christmas.”

“No, I can’t do it, and I won’t. Not till she graduates and gits her certificate. That’ll be next June.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Got a good deal to do with it. If I should leave now jes’s winter’s comin’ on I mightn’t git another job, and she’d have to come home and her eddication be sp’ilt.”

“What would bring her home?” I asked in surprise.

“What would bring her home?” he repeated, with some irritation. “Why they’d send her if the bills warn’t paid–that’s what Marm Marvin couldn’t help her, and Jed wouldn’t give her a cent. Them school-bills, you know, I’ve always paid out o’ my wages–that’s why Jed let her go. No; I’ll stick it out here till she finishes, if it kills me. Baby-girl sha’n’t miss nothin’ through me.”

One beautiful spring day I swung back the gate of a garden on the outskirts of the village of Plymouth and walked up a flower-bordered path to a cottage porch smothered in vines.

Ruby was standing in the door, her hands held out to me. I had not seen her for years. Her husband had not returned yet from their school, but she expected him every minute.

“And dear old Jim?” I asked. “What has become of him?”

“Look,” she said, pointing to a shambling, awkward figure stooping under the apple-trees, which were in full bloom. “There he is, picking blossoms with little Ruby. He never leaves her for a minute.”