Mr. Kavan went out, and
returned saying that it was a young man who had come up with
Evans's wagon and team, and that the wagon had gone over into
a gulch seven miles from here.
Mr. Kavan looked very grave.
"It's another mouth to feed," he said. They asked no questions,
and brought the lad in, a slangy, assured fellow of twenty, who,
having fallen into delicate health at a theological college, had
been sent up here by Evans to work for his board. The men were
too courteous to ask him what he was doing up here, but I boldly
asked him where he lived, and to our dismay he replied, "I've
come to live here." We discussed the food question gravely, as
it presented a real difficulty. We put him into a bed-closet
opening from the kitchen, and decided to see what he was fit for
before giving him work. We were very much amazed, in truth, at
his coming here. He is evidently a shallow, arrogant youth.
We have decided that to-day is November 26th; to-morrow is
Thanksgiving Day, and we are planning a feast, though Mr. K. said
to me again this morning, with a doleful face, "You see there's
another mouth to feed." This "mouth" has come up to try the
panacea of manual labor, but he is town bred, and I see that he
will do nothing. He is writing poetry, and while I was busy
to-day began to read it aloud to me, asking for my criticism. He
is just at the age when everything literary has a fascination,
and every literary person is a hero, specially Dr. Holland. Last
night was fearful from the lifting of the cabin and the breaking
of the mud from the roof. We sat with fine gravel driving in our
faces, and this morning I carried four shovelfuls of mud out of
my room. After breakfast, Mr. Kavan, Mr. Lyman, and I, with the
two wagon horses, rode the seven miles to the scene of
yesterday's disaster in a perfect gale of wind. I felt like a
servant going out for a day's "pleasuring," hurrying "through my
dishes," and leaving my room in disorder. The wagon lay half-way
down the side of a ravine, kept from destruction by having caught
on some trees.
It was too cold to hang about while the men hauled it up and
fixed it, so I went slowly back, encountering Mr. Nugent in a
most bitter mood - almost in an "ugly fit" - hating everybody, and
contrasting his own generosity and reckless kindness with the
selfishness and carefully-weighed kindnesses of others. People
do give him credit for having "as kind a heart as ever beat."
Lately a child in the other cabin was taken ill, and though there
were idle men and horses at hand, it was only the "desperado" who
rode sixty miles in "the shortest time ever made" to bring the
doctor.
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