Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/220

 I married a city girl I would understand her, anyway. I could not claim to be in love with this girl, nor with anyone else, but had always had a feeling that if a man and woman met and found each other pleasant and entertaining, there was no need of a long courtship, and when we came in from a walk I stated the object of my trip.

Miss McCraline was acquainted with a part of the story for, as stated, she had been teaching in M—boro at the time I went there to see Miss Rooks, and had seen her take up with the cook and marry foolishly. She had stated in her letters that she had been glad that I wrote to her and that she thought Miss Rooks had acted foolishly, and when I explained my circumstances and stated the proposition she seemed favorable to it. I told her to think it over and I would return the next day and explain it to her mother.

When I called the next morning and talked with her and her mother, they both thought it all right that Orlean should go to Dakota and file on the homestead, then we would marry and live together on the claim, but her mother added somewhat nervously and apparently ill at ease, that I had better talk with her husband. As the Reverend was then some three hundred and seventy-five miles south of Chicago attending conference, I couldn't see how we could get together, but we put in the Sunday attending church and Sunday School, and that evening went to a downtown theatre where we saw Lew Dokstader's ministrels with Neil O'Brien as captain of the fire department, which was very funny and I laughed until my head ached.