Blue Ruin Read Online Free PDF Page B

quivering in her eagerness. “I think I know the answer, Dana”—she lifted her eyes for a single fleeting look—“but I want to hear you say it, if you don’t mind.”
    It was very still there in the edge of the pine forest, with the fringe of maidenhair below them and the shimmer of the embroidery of copper and silver and gold out in the June Valleys far away. Almost for an instant it seemed to Lynette that it was sanctuary indeed, with the whispering winds above in the pines, a bird note dropping slowly down now and then from the throat of a thrush, and Dana’s eyes upon her in that grave, sweet, utterly loving look. Then he spoke.
    “Lovely, of course I’ll tell you, though there’s not so much to tell. As you say, you know it already, you’ve known it all along. Why of course it was Grandfather. I felt the obligation, sort of. I was named for him; he left me his property, or at least he left it with Grandmother in trust for me, you know. That’s the same thing. It was Grandfather’s dearest wish. And the family all expect it. A man would be a cad not to carry on after that. I thought about it a good deal when I was in college. There were several other lines I might have taken up where I would have been able to make more money and fame right at the start than seemed likely at that time I could ever make in the ministry. But nowhere would I have had more prestige of course. Really Grandfather was quite a great man. I never really understood how great until I entered the seminary. There were men there who remembered him, enthused over his preaching and all that. More than once he was held up in class as an example of a man who had reached the top of his profession. His sermons, too, were cited as illustrations of a pure, direct style that was recommended for imitation. You would have been surprised how reverently even some of the more eminent scholars among the faculty spoke of his strange, old-fashioned books of sermons. I read them long ago, of course, when I was a mere boy. They filled me with awe then with their tremendous earnestness. Of course they are quite out of date now, but classics in their way. I almost got my head turned, Lynn, they made so much of it in seminary, I having the same name and all and following in his footsteps. It did a lot for me in the way of prestige. Lynn, the light on your hair just there where you’re sitting is lovely. I don’t know but I’m glad you never bobbed your hair, though I confess I’m surprised that you’ve lived through the fashion so long without doing it. You will have to come to it of course if the fashion doesn’t change soon, though, for if I get a city church you’ll have to be quite up to date, you know.”
    She looked at him startled then smiled. He was joking of course. She laughed. “A city church!” she echoed. “You couldn’t begin on a city church, of course!”
    “Brownleigh thinks I can,” he said gravely, with conviction. “He says my talents would be wasted anywhere else. So you better be thinking about cutting your hair. You don’t want to look like a country parson’s wife.”
    Lynette did not smile. Her eyes were puzzled as she studied his face.
    “You speak almost as if you meant that,” she said lightly.
    “I do,” he said brightly. “I think you would be charming with it cut. Haven’t you often longed to get it off and be like the other girls?”
    “But you used to say you liked my hair,” said Lynette.
    “Well, I do, but one must be reasonable. You can’t go against the whole world of course, and one gets used to those things. But Lynn, I’m hungry as a bear. Why don’t we eat? I haven’t told you yet, but I’ve got to go back pretty soon.”
    “Got to go back!” said Lynette in dismay. “Why, you said we were to stay till sunset! It’s our day. It’s been four years since we sat up here till sunset and talked so long, you know. It’s—”
    She had almost said, “It’s my birthday, you know,” but he