How
significant and strange the words seemed! They were the kind of words a
lover might use in speaking to his beloved. She had read many novels, but
they contained no such words. It was better so. It was better to hear them
from human lips. Again she thought of Jim Priest's youth and boldly wished
he were still young. She told herself that she would like to see him young
and married to a beautiful young woman. She stopped by a fence that looked
out upon a hillside meadow. The sun seemed extraordinarily bright, the
grass in the meadow greener than she had ever seen it before. Two birds in
a tree nearby made love to each other. The female flew madly about and was
pursued by the male bird. In his eagerness he was so intent that he flew
directly before the girl's face, his wing nearly touching her cheek. She
went back through the orchard to the barns and through one of them to the
open door of a long shed that was used for housing wagons and buggies, her
mind occupied with the idea of finding Jim Priest, of standing perhaps near
him. He was not about, but in the open space before the shed, John May, a
young man of twenty-two who had just come to work on the farm, was oiling
the wheels of a wagon. His back was turned and as he handled the heavy
wagon wheels the muscles could be seen playing beneath his thin cotton
shirt. "It is so Jim Priest must have looked in his youth," the girl
thought.
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