Datasets:
edwindvinas
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testdataset

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
 Community
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our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn’t hear him. He
apologised this morning. I’m not afraid of any of Roaring Abel’s
stages.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated
yowls,” said Barney. “And I’ve told him he’s got to stop damning things
when you’re around.”
“Why?” asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a
sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney
Snaith had actually done so much for _her_. “I often feel like damning
things myself.”
For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish
creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic
and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.
Then he laughed.
“It will be a relief to have some one to do it for you, then. So you
don’t want anything but salt codfish?”
“Not tonight. But I dare say I’ll have some errands for you very often
when you go to Port Lawrence. I can’t trust Mr. Gay to remember to
bring all the things I want.”
Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the
garden for a long time.
Since then he had called several times, walking down through the
barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces
on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every
evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen
for it?
He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a
box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed
sacrilege to eat it.
She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She
wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his
eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his
back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she
talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew
little more of him than Valancy herself.
“But he isn’t bad,” said Cissy. “Nobody need ever tell me he is. He
_can’t_ have done a thing to be ashamed of.”
“Then why does he live as he does?” asked Valancy—to hear somebody
defend him.
“I don’t know. He’s a mystery. And of course there’s something behind
it, but I _know_ it isn’t disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn’t do
anything disgraceful, Valancy.”
Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done _something_—sometime. He
was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that,
in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who
was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun
when sober. Such a man wouldn’t bury himself for five years in Muskoka
and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a
reason for it. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was
sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing
like _that_ between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of
him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry
Valancy.
“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,”
Cissy had said simply. “_Everything_ would have been unbearable without
him.”
“Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew—and there’s a man somewhere
I’d like to shoot if I could find him,” Barney had said savagely.
Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal
about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one
glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon
while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales
of his adventures with “shacks” on trains while hoboing it across the
continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite
dreadful, but didn’t. The story of his working his way to England on a
cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon
enthralled her—especially the one of the night he was lost on the
divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out
there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the
other things?
If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.
“Found no gold,” he said. “Came away poorer than when I went. But such
a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind _got_ me.
I’ve never belonged to myself since.”
Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few
well-chosen words—how well-chosen Valancy did not realise. And he had a
knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.
“I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips,” thought Valancy.