England -- Fiction; Husband and wife -- Fiction; Indiana -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Mate selection -- Fiction
"No ordinary doctor, you must consult a specialist." She looked around
triumphantly.
Her mother smiled on her in loving approval.
"A specialist for what, Indy?" Stillwater asked drily.
Indiana met his eyes bent enquiringly upon her, then burst into
laughter.
"Well, you’ve phazed me this time," she said. Then she installed
herself on his knee. "Oh, I don’t mean a specialist at all. I mean a
consulting physician—an authority."
"Now you’re talking," answered Stillwater, with a beaming smile.
Indiana jumped off his knee. "An ordinary doctor isn’t good enough for
my father!" She gave a very good imitation of a cowboy’s swagger. "I’m
hungry, pa."
"Well, where are you going to have lunch?"
"I’d like mine brought up," said Mrs. Stillwater. "Are the trunks
unlocked, Kitty?" as a young, bright-looking girl appeared at the door.
"Yes ma’am. Come right in and I’ll make you comfortable."
"I’ll have my lunch up here with ma," said Mr. Stillwater. "What’s the
rest of you going to do?"
"Oh, we’ll go down and hear the band play," said Mrs. Bunker with
exuberant spirits. "Come along, Indiana!"
Stillwater was one of the men who had risen rapidly in the West. He had
married at a boyish age, a very young, gentle girl, and had emigrated
from the East soon after marriage, with his wife and her mother, Mrs.
Chazy Bunker. He built a house on government land in Indiana. The first
seven years meant hard and incessant toil, but in that time he and the
two women saw some very happy days. His marriage had been a boy and
girl affair, dating from the village school. One of those lucky unions,
built neither upon calculation or judgment, which terminate happily for
all concerned. Stillwater was only aware that the eyes of Mary Bunker
were blue and sweet as the wild violets that he picked and presented to
her, and that she never spelt above him. His manliness won her respect,
and his gentleness her love. Their immature natures thus thoughtlessly
and happily united, like a pair of birds at nesting time, grew together
as the years went on until they became one. After seven years of
unremitting work, Stillwater could stand and look proudly as far as the
eye could reach, on acre after acre of golden wheat tossing blithely in
the breeze. He had been helped to this result by the women who had lived
with the greatest economy and thrift putting everything into the land.
His young and inexperienced wife acted under the direction of her
mother, a splendid manager and a woman of great shrewdness and sense.
He could look, also, on the low, red-painted house, which could boast
now of many additions, and realize that his marriage had been a success.
In that low red house Indiana first saw the light, and, simultaneously,
oil was struck on the land. The child became the prospective heiress of
millions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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