He returned, "But I said it might be a friend and have practical uses in
life. I have not found it that myself. But some men have morbid
imagination. Let us walk." They went on again through the quiet splendour
of the woodlands.
"Uncle Jim is going away after the election."
"Yes."
"He will see Leila. Don't you miss her?"
"Yes, but not as you do. However, she will grow up and go by you and be a
woman while you are more slowly maturing. That is their way. And then she
will marry."
"Good gracious! Leila marry!"
"Yes--it is a way they have. Let us go home."
John was disinclined to talk. Marry--yes--when I am older, I shall ask
her until she does!
November came in churlish humour and raged in storms of wind and rain,
until before their time to let fall their leaves the woods were stripped
of their gay colours. On the fourth day of November the Squire voted the
Fremont electoral ticket, and understood that with the exception of
Swallow and Pole, Westways had followed the master of Grey Pine. The
other candidates did not trouble them. The sad case of Josiah and the
threat to capture their barber had lost Buchanan the twenty-seven votes
of the little town. Mr. Boynton, the carpenter, fastening the last
shingles on the chapel roof remarked to a workman that it was an awful
pity Josiah couldn't know about it and that the new barber wasn't up to
shaving a real stiff beard.
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