But Abby Hender had
always been one of the leaders of the town.
"Now, before we sit down again, I want you to step into my best room.
Perhaps you won't have time in the morning, and I've got something to
show you," she said persuasively.
It was a plain, old-fashioned best room, with a look of pleasantness
in spite of the spring chill and the stiffness of the best chairs.
They lingered before the picture of Mrs. Hender's soldier son, a poor
work of a poorer artist in crayons, but the spirit of the young face
shone out appealingly. Then they crossed the room and stood before
some bookshelves, and Abby Hender's face brightened into a beaming
smile of triumph.
"You didn't expect we should have all those books, now, did you, Joe
Laneway?" she asked.
He shook his head soberly, and leaned forward to read the titles.
There were no very new ones, as if times had been hard of late; almost
every volume was either history, or biography, or travel. Their owner
had reached out of her own narrow boundaries into other lives and into
far countries. He recognized with gratitude two or three congressional
books that he had sent her when he first went to Washington, and there
was a life of himself, written from a partisan point of view, and
issued in one of his most exciting campaigns; the sight of it touched
him to the heart, and then she opened it, and showed him the three or
four letters that he had written her,--one, in boyish handwriting,
describing his adventures on his first Western journey.
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