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What wonder that the tides of thought flowed back into the channel of old times on a day like this, when every passing face was a challenge to memory? It needed but a hint to bring forth the recollections that the sight of Richard Elrod had stirred to life.
There's jest two ends to the skein, though, and if you can git hold o' the right one it's easy work. But there's so many ways o' beginning a story, and you never know which one leads straightest to the p'int. I wonder many a time how folks ever finds out where to begin when they set out to write a book. However, I reckon if I start with Dick Elrod I'll git through somehow or other.
It got lost one winter, and when I asked Old Lady Elrod about it she said, 'Mistress Parrish, I cannot tell you whence it came nor whither it went. The old lady always used mighty pretty language. "Well, honey, them two lost flowers jest haunt me. They're like dead children.
"The richest man in the county," said Aunt Jane exultingly, as she followed the vanishing carriage with her keen gaze. "He went to the legislatur' last winter; the 'Hon. Richard Elrod' they call him now. And I can remember the time when he was jest Milly Baker's boy, and nothin' honorable about it, either." There was a suggestion of a story in the words and in the look in Aunt Jane's eyes.
All he said was, 'If Annie wants Dick Elrod, Annie shall have him. That's what he'd been sayin' ever since Annie was born. Nobody said anything to Annie, for she was the sort o' girl who didn't care whose feelin's was tramped on, if she jest had her own way.
Wick was jest such a boy as Dick Elrod, and Virginia was another Annie Crawford.
We'd all jest about made up our minds that he was dead, when one mornin', along in corn-plantin' time, the news was brought and spread over the neighborhood in no time that Dick Elrod had come home and was lyin' at the p'int of death. I remembered hearin' a hack go by on the pike the night before, and wondered to myself what was up.
The further a young couple can git from the old folks on both sides the better for everybody concerned. And besides, Annie wasn't the kind of a gyirl to git along with Dick's mother. A gyirl with the kind o' raisin' Annie'd had wasn't any fit daughter-in-law for a particular, high-steppin' woman like Old Lady Elrod.
After Old Lady Elrod died, he broke terrible fast, and folks used to say it was a pitiful sight to see him when he'd be watchin' Richard overseein' the hands and tendin' to things about the place. He'd lean on the fence, his hands tremblin' and his face workin', thinkin' about Dick and grievin' over him and wishin', I reckon, that Dick had been such a man as Milly's boy was.
And yonder comes Richard Elrod in his new carriage. Jest look at him! I do believe he grows younger and handsomer every day of his life." A sweet-faced woman sat beside him, and two pretty girls were in the seat behind them. Bowing courteously to the old woman on the door-step, Richard Elrod looked every inch a king of the soil and a perfect specimen of the gentleman farmer of Kentucky.
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