LITMIR.BIZ

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So you’ve had your merry little session with Robinson? Put it here!” and he extended a cordial hand.

      “Oh, considering the wait, it isn’t so wonderful. Sixteen thousand is an awful lot when it’s coming, but it just seems about half as big when it gets here.”

      Martin was talking not so much for Osborne’s benefit as to impress a woman who had entered behind him and was awaiting her turn. He wondered why, in his mental quest, he had not thought of her. Here was the very person for whom he was looking. Rose Conroy, the editor of the better local weekly, a year or so younger than himself, pleasant, capable. Here was a real woman, one above the average in character and brains.

      With a quick glance he took in her well-built figure. Everything about Rose—every line, every tone of her coloring suggested warmth, generosity, bigness. She was as much above medium height for a woman as Martin for a man. About her temples the line of her bright golden-brown hair had an oddly pleasing irregularity. The rosy color in her cheeks brought out the rich creamy whiteness of her skin. Warm, gray-blue eyes were set far apart beneath a kind, broad forehead and her wide, generous mouth seemed made to smile. The impression of good temper and fun was accented by her nose, ever so slightly up-tilted. Some might have thought Rose too large, her hips too rounded, the soft deep bosom too full, but Martin’s eyes were approving. Even her hands, plump, with broad palms, square fingers and well-kept nails, suggested decision. He felt the quiet distinction of her simple white dress. She was like a full-blown, luxuriant white and gold flower—like a rose, a full-blown white rose, Martin realized, suddenly. One couldn’t call her pretty, but there was something about her that gave the impression of sumptuous good looks. He liked, too, the spirited carriage of her head. “Healthy, good-sense, sound all through,” was his final appraisement.

      Pocketing his bank-book, he gave her a sharp nod, a colorless “how-de-do, Miss Rose,” and a tip of the hat that might have been a little less stiff had he been more accustomed to greeting the ladies. “Right well, thank you, Martin,” was her cordial response, and her friendly smile told him she had heard and understood the remarks about the big deal. He was curious to know how it had impressed her.

      Hurrying out, he asked himself how he could begin advances. Either he must do something quickly in time to get home for the evening chores or he must wait until another day. He must think out a plan, at once. Passing the bakery, half way down the block, he dropped in, ordered a chocolate ice-cream soda, and chose a seat near the window. As he had expected, it was not long before he saw Rose go across the courthouse yard toward her office on the north side of the square. He liked the swift, easy way in which she walked. She had been walking the first time he had ever seen her, thirteen years before, when her father had led his family uptown from the station, the day of their arrival in Fallon.

      Patrick Conroy had come from Sharon, Illinois, to perform the thankless task of starting a weekly newspaper in a town already undernourishing one. By sheer stubbornness he had at last established it. Twelve hundred subscribers, their little printing jobs, advertisers who bought liberal portions of space at ten cents an inch—all had enabled him to give his children a living that was a shade better than an existence. He had died less than a year ago, and Martin, like the rest of the community, had supposed the Fallon Independent would be sold or suspended. Instead, as quietly and matter-of-factly as she had filled her dead mother’s place in the home while her brothers and sisters were growing up, Rose stepped into her father’s business, took over the editorship and with a boy to do the typesetting and presswork, continued the paper without missing an issue. It even paid a little better than before, partly because it flattered Fallon’s sense of Christian helpfulness to throw whatever it could in Rose’s way, but chiefly because she made the Independent a livelier sheet with double the usual number of “Personals.”

      Yes, decidedly, Rose had force and push. Martin’s mind was made up. He would drop into the Independent ostensibly to extend his subscription, but really to get on more intimate terms with the woman whom he had now firmly determined should become his wife. He drew a deep breath of relaxation and finished the glass of sweetness with that sense of self-conscious sheepishness which most men feel when they surrender to the sticky charms of an ice-cream soda. A few minutes later he stood beside Rose’s worn desk.

      “How-do-you-do, once more, Miss Rose of Sharon. You’re not the Bible’s Rose of Sharon, are you?” he joshed a bit awkwardly.

      “If I were a rose of anywhere, I’d soon wilt in this stuffy little office of inky smells,” she answered pleasantly. “A rose would need petals of leather to get by here.”

      “A rose, by rights, belongs out of doors,”—Martin indicated the direction of his farm—“out there where the sun shines and there’s no smells except the rich, healthy smells of nature.”

      A merry twinkle appeared in Rose’s eyes. “Aren’t roses out there”—and her gesture was in the same direction—“rather apt to be crowded down by the weeds?”

      “Not if there was a good strong man about—a man who wanted to cultivate the soil and give the rose a pretty place in which to bloom.”

      “Why, Martin,” Rose laughed lightly, “the way you’re fixed out there with that shack, the only thing that ever blooms is a fine crop of rag-weeds.”

      At this gratuitous thrust a flood of crimson surged up Martin’s magnificent, column-like throat and broke in hot waves over his cheeks. “Well, it’s not going to be that way for long,” he announced evenly. “I’m going to plant a rose—a real rose there soon and everything is going to be right—garden, house and all.”

      “Is this your way of telling me you’re going to be married?”

      “Kinda. The only trouble is, I haven’t got my rose yet.”

      “Well, if I can’t have that item, at least I can print something about the selling of your coal rights. People will be interested because it shows the operators are coming in our direction. Here in Fallon, we can hardly realize all that this sudden new promotion may mean. From that conversation I heard at the bank I guess you got the regulation hundred an acre.”

      “Yes, and a good part of it is going into a first-class modern house with a heating plant and running hot and cold water in a tiled-floor bath-room, and a concrete cellar for the woman’s preserved things and built-in cupboards, lots of closets, a big garret, and hardwood floors and fancy paper on the walls, and the prettiest polished golden oak furniture you can buy in Kansas City, not to mention a big fireplace and wide, sunny porches. A rose ought to be happy in a garden like that, don’t you think? Folks’ll say I’ve gone crazy when they see my building spree, but I know what I’m about. It’s time I married and the woman who decides to be my wife is going to be glad to stay with me—”

      “See here, Martin Wade, what are you driving at? What does all this talk mean anyway? Do you want me to give you a boost with someone?”

      “You’ve hit it.”

      “Who is she?” Rose asked, with genuine curiosity.

      “You,” he said bluntly.

      “Well, of all the proposals!”

      “There’s nothing to beat around the bush about. I’m only thirty-four, a hard worker, with a tidy sum to boot—not that I’m boasting about it.”

      “But, Martin, what makes you think I could make you happy?”

      Martin felt embarrassed. He was not looking for happiness but merely for more of the physical comforts, and an escape from loneliness. He was practical; he fancied he knew about what could be expected from marriage, just as he knew exactly how many steers and hogs his farm could support. This was a new idea—happiness. It had never entered into his calculations. Life as he knew it was hard. There was no happiness in those fields when burned by the hot August winds, the soil breaking into cakes that left crevices which seemed to groan for water. That sky with its clouds that gave no rain was a hard sky. The people he knew were sometimes contented, but he could not remember ever having known any to whom the word “happy” could be applied. His father and mother—they had been a good husband

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