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I knew nothing definite against Guy, but in Riverbend all “traveling-men” were considered worldly and wicked. He traveled for a Chicago dry-goods firm, and our fathers didn’t like him because he put extravagant ideas into our mothers’ heads. He had very smooth and nattering ways, and he introduced into our simple community a great variety of perfumes and scented soaps, and he always reminded me of the merchants in Caesar, who brought into Gaul “those things which effeminate the mind,” as we translated that delightfully easy passage.

Nell was silting before the dressing-table in her nightgown, holding the new fur coat and rubbing her cheek against it, when I saw a sudden gleam of tears in her eyes. “You know, Peggy,” she said in her quick, impetuous way, “this makes me feel bad. I’ve got a secret from my daddy.”

I can see her now, so pink and eager, her brown hair in two springy braids down her back, and her eyes shining with tears and with something even softer and more tremulous.

“I’m engaged, Peggy,” she whispered, “really and truly.”

She leaned forward, unbuttoning her nightgown, and there on her breast, hung by a little gold chain about her neck, was a diamond ring–Guy Franklin’s solitaire; every one in Riverbend knew it well.

“I’m going to live in Chicago, and take singing lessons, and go to operas, and do all those nice things–oh, everything! I know you don’t like him, Peggy, but you know you are a kid. You’ll see how it is yourself when you grow up. He’s so different from our boys, and he’s just terribly in love with me. And then, Peggy,”–flushing all down over her soft shoulders,–“I’m awfully fond of him, too. Awfully.”

“Are you, Nell, truly?” I whispered. She seemed so changed to me by the warm light in her eyes and that delicate suffusion of color. I felt as I did when I got up early on picnic mornings in summer, and saw the dawn come up in the breathless sky above the river meadows and make all the cornfields golden.

“Sure I do, Peggy; don’t look so solemn. It’s nothing to look that way about, kid. It’s nice.” She threw her arms about me suddenly and hugged me.

“I hate to think about your going so far away from us all, Nell.”

“Oh, you’ll love to come and visit me. Just you wait.”

She began breathlessly to go over things Guy Franklin had told her about Chicago, until I seemed to see it all looming up out there under the stars that kept watch over our little sleeping town. We had neither of us ever been to a city, but we knew what it would be like. We heard it throbbing like great engines, and calling to us, that far-away world. Even after we had opened the windows and scurried into bed, we seemed to feel a pulsation across all the miles of snow. The winter silence trembled with it, and the air was full of something new that seemed to break over us in soft waves. In that snug, warm little bed I had a sense of imminent change and danger. I was somehow afraid for Nelly when I heard her breathing so quickly beside me, and I put my arm about her protectingly as we drifted toward sleep.

* * * * *

In the following spring we were both graduated from the Riverbend high school, and I went away to college. My family moved to Denver, and during the next four years I heard very little of Nelly Deane. My life was crowded with new people and new experiences, and I am afraid I held her little in mind. I heard indirectly that Jud Deane had lost what little property he owned in a luckless venture in Cripple Creek, and that he had been able to keep his house in Riverbend only through the clemency of his creditors. Guy Franklin had his route changed and did not go to Riverbend any more. He married the daughter of a rich cattle-man out near Long Pine, and ran a dry-goods store of his own. Mrs. Dow wrote me a long letter about once a year, and in one of these she told me that Nelly was teaching in the sixth grade in the Riverbend school.