Beauty for Ashes by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online

spend your time in getting ready to be a great businessman?”
    “No,” said her father, thoughtfully shaking his head. “It might be that if I hadn’t done my best feeding the pigs and doing all the other duties that were required of me, I wouldn’t ever have been in the position I am now!”
    “Father! How could you make that out?”
    “Why, I had to learn responsibility and honesty and diligence and reliability and regularity and conscientiousness somewhere, and I guess in my case feeding the pigs was just as good a way to learn those things as any. Another thing, I had to learn to do things I didn’t like to do. You know I never did really like to feed pigs, though I wouldn’t have owned it for a farm. It wasn’t considered good sportsmanship to give in to one’s likes and dislikes.”
    Gloria sat quietly considering that for some time.
    They changed places after a while, Gloria taking the wheel, and they drove on into the lovely afternoon among the mountains with now a glimmering lake lying like silver in the distance, now a river winding. They did not touch New York nor anything that could have reminded Gloria of that city. They went by byways not highways, taking a road when it looked attractive, whether it went in a special direction or not. Deep into the heart of a woods they would wander, and out again into a little settlement, so out of the way that the dwellers hadn’t even thought to put out a T OURISTS sign, so quiet that it seemed almost like a deserted village.
    Many places they passed reminded her father of his childhood, and seeing she enjoyed it, he talked on freely. It seemed that he, too, took pleasure in going back over those old days. It had been so many years since he had anyone to talk to about them. Adelaide, his wife, had always been restless when he mentioned his early days and upbringing. She had been a Boston girl and considered herself above him, even though he did bring her more wealth than she ever had before.
    It was not until the shades of evening began to drop down and seem to wrap them in more cozily to each other, that Gloria, after quite a silence, ventured hesitantly, “Dad, is it true that all men nowadays—that is all
young
men nowadays are—well— aren’t quite true? I mean, do they
all
go after—low-down girls and think nothing of it? Even if—they’re—going to be married?”
    Her father gave her a startled look. “Certainly not!” he said decidedly. Then he stopped short and tried to think what young men of his acquaintance he could be sure of. “Certainly not,” he repeated with satisfaction. “I have in mind several who are not in the least that way.”
    But he suddenly remembered that they were not young men in Gloria’s clique. They were plain, hardworking young fellows in his office, and he knew their ways, had had them shadowed before ever he trusted them with important business.
    “Whatever put such a question as that into your head?” he asked, turning keen eyes and searching her through the dusk.
    “Why, Mother said they all were,” said Gloria, struggling to explain. “Mother laughed at me when I said I felt as though Stan had never been mine because of his going up to New York to that girl—” Her voice trailed off into silence, and she turned her eyes to the woods they were passing through.
    “Poor child!” said her father tenderly, reaching out a hand to touch hers softly as it guided the wheel. The tone of his voice made Gloria catch her breath as she went on.
    “And Mother said that was silly of me. She said all young men were that way, that they had to sow their wild oats and then they settled down, and that I was very disloyal to Stan to feel that way, that all young fellows, especially nowadays, thought nothing of a thing like that. Then I asked her if you did that way when you were young, and she looked kind of funny and smiled and said no, very sharply, that you were ‘different.’ But I couldn’t quite understand. Dad, I