at the town hall, and lectures under the auspices of the aristocratic D. O. F.—Daughters of the Old Frontier.
But she never saw any boy she preferred to any other, never was conscious of being preferred, excepting once—and she was not quite certain about that.
It was old Dick Neeland’s son, Jim—vaguely understood to have been for several years in Paris studying art—and who now turned up in Gayfield during Christmas week.
Ruhannah remembered seeing him on several occasions when she was a little child. He was usually tramping across country with his sturdy father, Dick Neeland of Neeland’s Mills—an odd, picturesque pair with their setter dogs and burnished guns, and old Dick’s face as red as a wrinkled winter apple, and his hair snow-white.
There was six years’ difference between their ages, 40 Jim Neeland’s and hers, and she had always considered him a grown and formidable man in those days. But that winter, when somebody at the movies pointed him out to her, she was surprised to find him no older than the other youths she skated with and danced with.
Afterward, at a noisy village party, she saw him dancing with every girl in town, and the drop of Irish blood in this handsome, careless young fellow established him at once as a fascinating favourite.
Rue became quite tremulous over the prospect of dancing with him. Presently her turn came; she rose with a sudden odd loss of self-possession as he was presented, stood dumb, shy, unresponsive, suffered him to lead her out, became slowly conscious that he danced rather badly. But awe of him persisted even when he trod on her slender foot.
He brought her an ice afterward, and seated himself beside her.
“I’m a clumsy dancer,” he said. “How many times did I spike you?”
She flushed and would have found a pleasant word to reassure him, but discovered nothing to say, it being perfectly patent to them both that she had retired from the floor with a slight limp.
“I’m a steam roller,” he repeated carelessly. “But you dance very well, don’t you?”
“I have only learned to dance this winter.”
“I thought you an expert. Do you live here?”
“Yes. … I mean I live at Brookhollow.”
“Funny. I don’t remember you. Besides, I don’t know your name—people mumble so when they introduce a man.”
“I’m Ruhannah Carew.”
“Carew,” he repeated, while a crease came between 41 his eyebrows. “Of Brookhollow–– Oh, I know! Your father is the retired missionary—red house facing the bridge.”
“Yes.”
“Certainly,” he said, taking another look at her; “you’re the little girl daddy and I used to see across the fields when we were shooting woodcock in the willows.”
“I remember you,” she said.
“I remember you!”
She coloured gratefully.
“Because,” he added, “dad and I were always afraid you’d wander into range and we’d pepper you from the bushes. You’ve grown a lot, haven’t you?” He had a nice, direct smile though his speech and manners were a trifle breezy, confident, and sans façon. But he was at that age—which succeeds the age of bumptiousness—with life and career before him, attainment, realisation, success, everything the mystery of life holds for a young man who has just flung open the gates and who takes the magic road to the future with a stride instead of his accustomed pace.
He was already a man with a profession, and meant that she should become aware of it.
Later in the evening somebody told her what a personage he had become, and she became even more deeply thrilled, impressed, and tremulously desirous that he should seek her out again, not venturing to seek him, not dreaming of encouraging him to notice her by glance or attitude—not even knowing, as yet, how to do such things. She thought he had already forgotten her existence.
But that this thin, freckled young thing with grey 42 eyes ought to learn how much of a man he was remained somewhere in the back of Neeland’s head; and when he heard his hostess say that somebody would have to see Rue Carew home, he offered to do it. And presently went over and asked the girl if he might—not too patronisingly.
In the cutter, under fur, with the moonlight electrically brilliant and the world buried in white, she ventured to speak of his art, timidly, as in the presence of the very great.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I studied in Paris. Wish I were back there. But I’ve got to draw for magazines and illustrated papers; got to make a living, you see. I teach at the Art League, too.”
“How happy you must be in your career!” she said, devoutly meaning it, knowing no better than to say it.
“It’s a business,” he corrected her, kindly.
“But—yes—but it is art, too.”
“Oh, art!” he laughed. It was the fashion that year to shrug when art was mentioned—reaction from too much gabble.
“We don’t busy ourselves with art; we busy ourselves with business. When they use my stuff I feel I’m getting on. You see,” he admitted with reluctant honesty, “I’m young at it yet—I haven’t had very much of my stuff in magazines yet.”
After a silence, cursed by an instinctive truthfulness which always spoiled any little plan to swagger:
“I’ve had several—well, about a dozen pictures reproduced.”
One picture accepted by any magazine would have awed her sufficiently. The mere fact that he was an artist had been enough to impress her. 43
“Do you care for that sort of thing—drawing, painting, I mean?” he inquired kindly.
She drew a quick breath, steadied her voice, and said she did.
“Perhaps you may turn out stuff yourself some day.”
She scarcely knew how to take the word “stuff.” Vaguely she surmised it to be professional vernacular.
She admitted shyly that she cared for nothing so much as drawing, that she longed for instruction, but that such a dream was hopeless.
At first he did not comprehend that poverty barred the way to her; he urged her to cultivate her talent, bestowed advice concerning the Art League, boarding houses, studios, ways, means, and ends, until she felt obliged to tell him how far beyond her means such magic splendours lay.
He remained silent, sorry for her, thinking also that the chances were against her having any particular talent, consoling a heart that was unusually sympathetic and tender with the conclusion that this girl would be happier here in Brookhollow than scratching around the purlieus of New York to make both ends meet.
“It’s a tough deal,” he remarked abruptly. “—I mean this art stuff. You work like the dickens and kick your heels in ante-rooms. If they take your stuff they send you back to alter it or redraw it. I don’t know how anybody makes a living at it—in the beginning.”
“Don’t you?”
“I? No.” He reddened; but she could not notice it in the moonlight. “No,” he repeated; “I have an allowance from my father. I’m new at it yet.”
“Couldn’t a man—a girl—support herself by drawing 44 pictures for magazines?” she inquired tremulously.
“Oh, well, of course there are some who have arrived—and they manage to get on. Some even make wads, you know.”
“W-wads?” she repeated, mystified.
“I mean a lot of money. There’s that girl on the Star,