The Loves of Ambrose. Vandercook Margaret

his path, a fishing-pole and line deftly circled through the air caught its hook in his coat sleeve.

      The one boy struggled, while the other jerked, and then a rich voice drawled: "Please come back, old man, for if you really want to know why I've run off to myself each spring for these past five years so it clean hurts you not to know, I reckon I've got to tell you."

      Then Miner returned and sat down again. His friend's behaviour was now even more puzzling than before, for although Ambrose was close by, his eyes had a faraway look in them, his eyebrows were twitching, his slender nostrils quivering, and indeed, he had the appearance of a man having strayed off some great distance by himself.

      "Swear you'll never give me away, Miner," he began, and holding up one of his big hands in the sunlight – his hands which were the truly beautiful thing about him – he made a mystic sign to which his companion swore.

      "You won't understand when I do tell you," he hedged, "but I've been comin' away off to myself every spring since I was a boy on account of the 'Second Song of Solomon.'"

      And at this Miner groaned, shutting his near-sighted eyes. "Lord, he's the chap that had a thousand wives!"

      Then back to earth came Ambrose, his blue eyes swimming in mists of laughter and his shouts waking all the echoes in the hills.

      "Wives!" he cried, rolling his long body over and over in the grass, and kicking out his legs in sheer ecstasy, "Miner Hobbs, if ever you git an idea fixed in your head, earthquakes won't shake it. Wives, is it? Why, I ain't given Peachy Williams a thought of my own accord since I started on this trip, nor any other girl, for that matter, so I can't for the land sakes see why I have been havin' her poked at me so continual! 'Course there wouldn't be sense in me denyin' that I have a hankerin' for girls; flesh and blood, 'ceptin' yours, Miner Hobbs, cannot deny the kind we raise in Kentucky. However, they ain't been on my mind this trip. Old King Solomon done a lot of things besides havin' a thousand wives – they was his recreation. He builded a temple and founded a nation and wrote pretty nigh the greatest poetry heard in these parts."

      Here the speaker commenced pulling at the damp earth to hide his embarrassment, and then made a pretence of examining the soil that came up in his hand.

      "It's the 'Second Song of Solomon' I'm meanin', Miner, and I've already told you you ain't goin' to comprehend me when I do explain," he continued patiently, "but bein's as it's you, I reckon I've got to try. It's that song about spring. Ever since I was a little boy and first heard it, why it began a-callin' me to get away for a little space to myself to try and kind of hear things grow. It's a disappointin' reason for me sneakin' off, ain't it, and foolish? I wish I had been doin' somethin' with more snap to it, just to gratify Pennyroyal. But at first, you see, I didn't mean nothin' in particular by not tellin', knowin' that folks would think my real reason outlandish, but by and by when the town got so all-fired curious and kept sayin' I was up to different sorts of mischief, I just thought I'd keep 'em guessin'." Now the long face was quivering in its eagerness to make things clear. "Why, it seems to me from the time that the first green tips come peepin' up between the stubble in the winter fields I kin hear that Solomon Song a-beatin' and a-beatin' in my ears. 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'"

      But poor Miner was making a cup for his ear with his hand. "But turtles ain't voices, Ambrose, that anybody knows of," he murmured dimly; "it's frogs we hear croakin' along the river bank."

      And this time Ambrose laughed to himself. "It's croaks you're always hearin', old fellow, ain't it?" he whispered affectionately. And then – "I reckon it makes no difference to me whether it's a frog or a turtle, a bird or even a tree toad. It's the song of life, I'm listenin' for, Miner."

      CHAPTER III

      PEACHY

      Nevertheless, in spite of Ambrose's intentionally truthful declaration to Miner, for the rest of that afternoon and evening he was never wholly able to get free from the thought of Peachy. However, he did not then stir from his first shelter in the woods, finding endless refreshment in the beauty of the Kentucky river landscape, nor did he surrender himself readily to the lure of the feminine; but poor Ambrose was a victim of the strange force that lies embodied within a universal idea.

      A bird appearing on the branch of a tree above his head and bending over, peeped into his face twittering: "Pe-che, Pe-che," as impudently as any small Susan; then, catching his eye, with a little mocking courtesy, flew away. A robin hopping on the grass near the boy's side, pecked at the crumbs left over from his luncheon; her full breast, her air of concentrated domesticity somehow recalled the image of his latest affection – Peachy, the youthful mistress of the Red Farm.

      Now in setting out on this spring pilgrimage nothing had been farther from the traveller's intention than any dallying with his familiar weakness. Girls – why, the years behind Ambrose Thompson blossomed with them; never could he recall a season since his extremest boyhood when he had not been enchantingly in love. But actually there was little reason why Peachy Williams should be thrust upon him more than another save that he was growing older and had been devoting some time to her of late. Besides which, she was comely.

      Toward nightfall the bird songs became such intimate revelations of love that several times the listener put his fingers into his ears in his effort to fight their suggestions away. And yet it was not until next morning that his decision actually broke.

      And then it was not so much a matter of emotion. But he had had an uncomfortable night of fitful dreaming and awakened with yesterday's spiritual elation gone and with an intense desire for human companionship.

      Rising first on one elbow, Ambrose made a remark which has probably been considered by the greater portion of the male creation. "I wonder now," he asked himself, "ef bein' looked after and made over ain't sometimes better'n bein' free?"

      A very little while after this the boy cooked his own breakfast, with extremely poor results, and then making as pleasing a toilet as his reflection in the river permitted, immediately set out in the direction of the Red Farm. And no longer did Ambrose's face show signs of struggle: his air had now become one of peaceful acquiescence in the laws of nature. He had no idea of committing himself definitely, however, by this visit to Peachy; his mind was not wholly made up and he desired nothing abrupt or startling; it was simply that at present a day of solitary musing did not appear so appealing as her companionship, and moreover, Ambrose shared the universal masculine delusion that his was the important mind to be made up.

      A sense of humour means a sense of proportion and therefore an appreciation of values, so Ambrose Thompson, the young Kentucky Romeo, was not without a certain thrifty streak. In driving along it was not disagreeable to reflect that the Red Farm was the richest tobacco farm in the county and that Peachy was its sole heiress. Not that Peachy by herself was insufficient; Ambrose also had pleasure in recalling the firmness of her young bosom, the sheen of her auburn hair, the whiteness of her teeth – and then – how frequently and how delightfully she laughed. That her laugh was non-committal had not up to this time troubled her admirer, who yearned for a feminine audience and had not yet learned to ask that this audience be discriminating.

      Even feeding chickens may be made an alluring picture, or at least Ambrose thought so, when he had driven unobserved into the farmyard and waited there watching Peachy, with her sleeves rolled back, flinging the corn to the ground. Also with his accustomed sensitiveness to impressions the boy realized that the girl herself was not unlike one of her own creamy leghorn hens; she, too, was both red and white with her clear healthy skin, red hair, and red-brown eyes – and then the fulness of her figure! The young man laughed delightedly, when turning and catching sight of him the girl started running toward him with short, uneven steps that yet got over the ground very quickly, and actually when she spoke, there was a little cluck to her voice.

      And yet, somehow, Peachy did not seem to feel the same degree of surprise that her visitor did at his own unexpected appearance. She blushed when he kissed her hand with an ardour peculiar to Ambrose though foreign to custom in the "Pennyrile," but she betrayed no wonder at his visit in the broad daylight when plainly he should have been at work in his store. Neither did