HELEN’S TOAST
Judge Briscoe was sitting out under the afternoon
sky with his chair tilted back and his feet propped
against the steps. His coat was off, and Minnie
sat near at hand sewing a button on the garment for
him, and she wore that dreamy glaze that comes over
women’s eyes when they sew for other people.
From the interior of the house rose and fell the murmur
of a number of voices engaged in a conversation, which,
for a time, seemed to consist of dejected monosyllables;
but presently the judge and Minnie heard Helen’s
voice, clear, soft, and trembling a little with excitement.
She talked only two or three minutes, but what she
said stirred up a great commotion. All the voices
burst forth at once in ejaculations—almost
shouts; but presently they were again subdued and
still, except for the single soft one, which held
forth more quietly, but with a deeper agitation, than
any of the others.
“You needn’t try to bamboozle me,”
said the judge in a covert tone to his daughter, and
with a glance at the parlor window, whence now issued
the rumble of Warren Smith’s basso. “I
tell you that girl would follow John Harkless to Jericho.”
Minnie shook her head mysteriously, and bit a thread
with a vague frown.
“Well, why not?” asked the judge crossly.
“Why wouldn’t she have him, then?”
“Well, who knows he’s asked her yet?”
Minnie screamed derisively at the density of man,
“What made him run off that way, the night he
was hurt? Why didn’t he come back in the
house with her?”
“Pshaw!”
“Don’t you suppose a woman understands?”
“Meaning that you know more about it than I
do, I presume,” grunted the old gentleman.
“Yes, father,” she replied, smiling benignantly
upon him.
“Did she tell you?” he asked abruptly.
“No, no. I guess the truth is that women
don’t know more than men so much as they see
more; they understand more without having to read about
it.”
“That’s the way of it, is it?” he
laughed. “Well, it don’t make any
difference, she’ll have him some time.”
“No, father; it’s only gratitude.”
“Gratitude!” The judge snorted scornfully.
“Girls don’t do as much as she’s
done for him out of gratitude. Look what she’s
doing; not only running the ‘Herald’ for
him, but making it a daily, and a good daily at that.
First time I saw her I knew right away she was the
smartest girl I ever laid eyes on;—I expect
she must have got it from her mother. Gratitude!
Pooh! Look how she’s studied his interests,
and watched like a cat for chances for him in everything.
Didn’t she get him into Eph Watts’s company?
She talked to Watts and the other fellows, day after
day, and drove around their leased land with ’em,
and studied it up, and got on the inside, and made
him buy. Now, if they strike it—and
