"Heavier for you," I replied.
So he put the bag in the back of my buggy and stepped in beside me
diffidently.
"Pull up the lap robe," I said, "and be comfortable."
"Well, sir, I'm glad of a lift," he remarked. "A bag of seed wheat is
about all a man wants to carry for four miles."
"Aren't you the man who has taken the old Rucker farm?" I asked.
"I'm that man."
"I've been intending to drop in and see you," I said.
"Have you?" he asked eagerly.
"Yes," I said. "I live just across the hills from you, and I had a
notion that we ought to be neighbourly--seeing that we belong to the
same society."
His face, which had worn a look of set discouragement (he didn't know
beforehand what the Rucker place was like!), had brightened up, but when
I spoke of the society it clouded again.
"You must be mistaken," he said. "I'm not a Mason!"
"No more am I," I said.
"Nor an Oddfellow."
"Nor I."
As I looked at the man I seemed to know all about him. Some people come
to us like that, all at once, opening out to some unsuspected key. His
face bore not a few marks of refinement, though work and discouragement
had done their best to obliterate them; his nose was thin and high, his
eye was blue, too blue, and his chin somehow did not go with the Rucker
farm.
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