Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/260

 with his love. And the valley being now void of her kin, she was doubly an exile.

Such new desolation as she must have felt was masked under jesting dispraise of our execrable Northern climate. Surely a land permitted to congeal so utterly had forfeited the grace of its Maker.

Clem's lack of executive genius also earned a meed of my neighbor's disparagement. He was a worthless, trifling "boy," an idling dreamer, an irresponsible, inconsequent visionary, in whose baseless fancies it was astounding that a woman of her years should fatuously place reliance.

I must confess that I was more than once guilty of irritation when Miss Caroline spoke thus slightingly of her "boy" of one who had been unable to view himself as other than her personal property. Again and again it seemed to me that, fine little creature that she was, her tone toward Clem lacked the right feeling. I should not have demanded gratitude precisely; at least no bald expression of it. But a manner of speech denoting, if not wording, a recognition of his unswerving loyalty would have accorded better with the estimate I had otherwise formed of her character. The absence of any tone or word that even one so devoted as I could construe to her advantage was puzzling in the extreme.

Still, feeling toward her as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished. But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a