Kipling's pardon--that's another story.
"I don't think I'd care to double-crew my mill," Gun would say when the
conversation turned to matrimony. "I've been raised to keep your own
engine and take care of it, and pull what you could. In double-heading
there's always a row as to who ought to go ahead and enjoy the scenery
or stay behind and eat cinders."
I knew from the first that Gun had a story to tell, if he'd only give it
up, and I fear I often led up to it, with the hope that he would tell it
to me--but he never did.
My big friend sent a sum of money away every month, I supposed to some
relative, until one day I picked up from the floor a folded paper dirty
from having been carried long in Gun's pocket, and found a receipt. It
read:
"MISSION, SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 1, 1878.
"Received of O. Gunderson, for Mabel Rogers, $40.00.
"SISTER THERESA."
Ah, a little girl in the story! I thought; it's a sad story, then.
There's nothing so pure and beautiful and sweet and joyous as a little
girl, yet when a little girl has a story it's almost always a sad story.
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