Entangled Hearts

Chapter 9

The table was spread with a white cloth and upon it were placed dishes filled with delicious foods. Foods that were rarely prepared in the kitchen of the Porter home except at such times when special guests of Eli's were present. During the course of the noon meal the conversation drifted from one subject until at length it fell upon a discussion of the kinds of meats that were most liked. Eli favored pork, Martha brought out that roast beef, such as they were eating, was her choice.

"Well, if you would like my opinion," Aunt Laura May began primly, looking over her spectacles as she spoke, "Chicken and fish are my favorites, by the way, how are the trout biting this season?"

"Fairly well, I think," Eli answered, Laura Mae, will you take a rod and try for some this very afternoon? Then your aunt might have a Mountain Trout for supper. Don't give up until you have at least eight or ten beauties." Eli grinned a supposed to be a tender smile at his young daughter, who answered politely.

"Yes, Father, I will try and catch some."

"My, Laura Mae has grown this last year. She is almost a young woman now," Aunt Laura May remarked, beaming at her niece. The girl could feel the blood flooding her cheeks and forehead.

"She is getting grown up enough," the father answered, "To be the favorite with some of the boys around here, but there is only one with whom I will permit her to keep company."

"Indeed?" The aunt was all curiosity.

"He is a handsome lad of my liking. He fell and got his hip broke in a basketball game last winter, but I think he will come out all right. I saw him a day or two ago. He sure is always glad to see me."

Laura Mae glanced at her mother, whose eyes were full of sympathy, then she looked down into her lap to hide the tears that were forming in her pretty brown eyes. She concluded in her mind that she would keep company with no boy is Phil Dreyer's companionship was to be forced upon her. Then the thought came to her, "I wonder if that is why Aunt Laura May remained single. Did she choose to be an old maid rather than marry someone she could not really love?" The thought softened her heart toward her aunt for a time and even looked upon the dignified lady with a great deal of sympathy. Perhaps, after all, that would be the life she would be forced to choose. Her mother had given up her lover and had always been unhappy because of having married the wrong man, she was sure. Her aunt had never married, which could be the worst to bear?