Romance Of Dell

Dell was teil. He had hair natnrally blond and soft and it had been bleaohed by sun and weather until it was as lifeless as cured hay. His face was tauned and he walked witli the uncertain, lounging gait that comes from traveling after the plow, toiling over soft ground and keeping foothold on steep hillsides. Dell had lived to be 24 without even so mnch as looking at a girl since his schooldays. In fact, Dell would have had little time to devote to girls. He was busy from early morning until night about the farm, and when there was a few days' respite there he hitched up his team and drove to Groveland to help his brother in his celery and sweet corn fields. One day there was excitement in the Mason farmhouse. Dell brought a ls'tter from the postoffice to his rnother, and she read that Miss Hamilton, who had extensive forest interests in the vicinity, would be her guest for a day or two while looking over her property. "Do not make any fuss for me, please, ' ' Miss Hamilton wrote. ' ' I know how bnsy you are at this season. Have Dell 'run down' a hen and let me have a potpie for dinner. ' ' Dell smiled at the mention of his name. He had been too young to remember Miss Hamilton when she went away, but he was proud to know she remembered him. "I suppose Pil have to meet her at the t-r-a-i-n, " said Dell, with the peculiar drawl that had come down to him from Puritan Green Mountain ancestors. "I suppose I'll have to dress u-p." "Of conrse, Dell, and put the best harness on the horses and take the wagon down to the creek and wash off the mud. ' ' "I guess she '11 get nsed to m u-d, " said Dell. When the train climbed the hill and finally stopped at the hillside depot, Dell was waiting, holding tight rein over his fractious farm horses, which were unused to the"chaff chuff" of the exhaust of the locomotive. Two women were handed down from the vestibule. One Dell knew was Miss Hamilton and a small blond person by her side was a straneer. "You are Dell, I know, " said Miss Hamilton, coming up. "This is my friend, Miss Sayles, " and the blond visión smiled at Dell and showed her pretty white teeth. "Can you get in?" asked Dell, for the horses were restless and he couldn't get out to assist them, and all the way down the hill he sat very straight and handled the lines, conscious that the prettiest girl he had ever seen was sitting behind him and probably contrasting him with the men who drove for her in the park and on the city boulevards. When he stopped the horses at the farm gate and helped the ladies down from the high wagon, he thought to kiniself that it was like lifting a dolí when Miss Sayles put her foot on the step and held out her hands to him. If she had been looking at him, she would have seen that he blushed clear up to his faded white hair. But she wasn't looking. She saw only the farmhouse hidden in the trees, was conscious of the drifting scent of violets from the garden and feit the sunlight falling like a benediction over all. Dell watched her going np the path to meet his mother standing on the porch in her best calicó dress and fresh gingham apron. "She looks like a yellow bird," he said to himself. A thousand times he had seen a graceful bird poise just as she was poised on the step of the porch, seemingly ready for flight into space. The story of how Dell came to worship at the fair girl's shrine is a short one. The first thing he did that morning was to piek a great bunch of violets from the border for her. In the afternoon he was her guide to the iunermost recesses where nature slides away her spring jewels of hepática and arbutus. He threw stones into the creek that she migèt cross without wetting her dainty feet. He showed her where the wintergreén berries grew thickest and laughed because she was afraid to eat them. He did not say much. Dell seldom said much, but he loved to hear her talk. "She'8 a pleasant girl, " said the mother to Dell that night. "Yes," said Dell, "she's a great t-a-1-k-e-r. " Miss Salyes might not have feit complimented if she had heard Deli's comment. It was sincere. To Dell it was a great thing to be able to talk well. The days following were full of delight to the girl. All the glories of the spring were heaped upon her. 'Birds awakened her iu the morning with a thousand musical voices. fcihe brought home loads of delight from the fields and woods in the afternoon, and in the evening Dell told her stories of autumn hunts and huskinga He told how a wornai: t knew had become a missionary. "And shehasgoue toteach the heathen?" asked the girl. "N-o, " drawled Dell. "I gness she'g what you'd cali a home missionary She goes around blacking s-t-o-v-e-s. " Dell's mother explained that the woman in question had a lightniug blackiug outfit, and she went abont the neighborhood' blacking stoves without charge just to oecupy her time and benefit the appearance of her neighbors' bitchens. There was a world of tenderness in Dells voice when he talked to the girl. Seldom did he grow tender in his words, however. only once, when they were sitting on the porch toward evening and a mosquito carne hummmg about Dell's ears. He streek at it with his open hand, and it flew toward the girl. ' ' Don 't send your mosquitoes over tbil way to bite me, " she said. "That's what I'd do if I was a mosq-n-i-t-o, " said Dell without a smile and with a degree of earnestness that almost frighteued her. She went into the house then, and Dell saw her no more that evening, and there was a little straiu in his left side that almost choked him when he thought of her. He told his mother what he had said. "I meant it, t-o-o, " he said and then added desperately, "I wish I was a mos-q-u-i-t-o. " "Dell,'' said his mother, "you must not say such things. She won't like it. She isn't plain, like ns, and she won't know bow to take it. But they are goiug away in the morning, so you must be up early to drive thein to the station. " As the train left at an early hour every one was awake soon after daybreak. When the girl came down stairs dressed for her journey, she looked around for Dell. He was not there. His place at the breakf ast table was cleared. The mother bustled in. ' ' Dell had to go to Groveland this niorniug, " she said. "Little Peter Fergusou will drive you to the depot. " "But he didn't say goodby to us, " said the girl. "I cali it unfair of Dell to go away without saying goodby." ' ' Well, be had to go early, and you wasn'tup, " said the mother, "and he said I wasn't to disturb you. " Dell, driving dowu through the shady roads of the way to Groveland, with his white slouch hat over his eyes and his shoulders stooped forvvard as one sits when thinking, heard the whistlo of the train at the crossing and stopped his horses until the last rumble of the wheels had ceased. Then he touched his horses with the whip aud went on. For the first time the birds sang unnoticed over his head. He didn't see the carpet of dandelions by the roadside, nor did he hear the tinkle of the brook as it dropped over the slate ledges into the ravine. He heard nothing but a sound of a young, joyous voice that had made music for him for a week and saw nothing but a glint of yellow hair that was really nothing but the sunshine playing about him. And that night the girl went into Miss Hamilton's room, and sitting down on an ottoman laid her head in the other woman's lap and cried: "What is it, Bernardine? Aren't you happy?" "Yes," she said, "I am happy, but I want to go back, I want to go back. Do yon suppose I will some time?" "I think it very likely, "said Miss Hamilton. -