Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1919 - Feb 1920)

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Crooked Straight They say that a man who's once been in prison can't go straight again. But Ben Trimble did, and by doing so he evened scores with the man who had driven him to crime, and won the girl of his choice. By John Edgar Graham into his mind there flashed a picture of a time when those words had a more serious meaning for him. BEN TRIMBLE sat in the farmhouse doorway, to avail himself of the light of the declining sun by which he hastened to complete an awkward job of needle-work. So absorbed was the young bachelor in the intricacies of thread, thimble, and fabric, that he failed to notice the stealthy approach of intruders until an ominous shadow fell across his patchwork and a silvery voice said, jokingly: "It's never too late to mend !" Ben started at the words. Into his mind there flashed a picture of a time when those words had had a more serious meaning for him — when they had come back to him as he stood, wet, shivering, hungry, and penniless before a window full of food, wondering where his next meal was coming from. But the next instant that recollection vanished, as he suddenly turned and saw the smiling face of Vera Owen, his next-door neighbor, for Vera — well, Vera was his sweetheart. She and her father had stepped in for a casual call on the young farmer, and had surprised him at the task of sewing a patch onto the seat of a bursted little pair of boy's trousers. Ben blushed vigorously and flung the garment to one side, and welcombed, with stuttering embarrassment, the visitors into the house. "Ben, dear," Vera said, "why don't you call on me to do the sewing for the children ? There are hundreds of little things that I could do. I can't understand why you won't let me help you." "Now, Vera," cautioned her father with a knowing smile, "You are a leetle too anxious to squirm your way into Mr. Trimble's fambily. He's liable to get skairt and fly the coop. Now when your ma was slipping up to throw a halter over me, she p'tended like " "Oh, father, hush !" commanded the girl in a voice full of embarrassment. "If you can't act decent, go home !" The girl was very near to tears. And as for Ben, he felt more like a convict than ever. The old man's words were practically a challenge to Ben to marry the girl — or else give some valid reason for P. P.-3 remaining a bachelor. In many old-fashioned rural communities life is much more of a straightforward proposition than it is in the cities. What is one man's business is every man's business ; no secret diplomacy is permitted. Marriage is not the private affair of the parties who are to be married, but an "open covenant, openly arrived at." The whole community was beginning to ask with a significant intonation: "When is this Ben Trimble and old Lucius Owen's gal goin' to jump the broomstick ? What's a holdin' him off? That gal's so stuck on him that she don't know which end her head's on ; and her dad's rich as goose grease, and perfectly willin' she should have him. He's a lone bachelor there, with" two orphant children on his hands. Lord knows that if anybody needs a woman, he does. Then what's a-holdin' 'em back from gettin' married?" Lucius Owen was one of the wealthiest citizens of Riggby County. He was a typical hard-working, shrewd, grasping farmer; he knew the farming game and nothing else, and he had capitalized his knowledge with the "capital" of hard muscle and long hours of toil, until at the age of fifty he found himself master of a two-hundred-acre farm with blooded stock, bankable securities, and cash in hand — all to the amount of some fifty thousand dollars. In his lifetime of toil and thrift, he had prospered at the rate of a thousand dollars a year. Clever men who live by their wits often make that much money in a day. Old Lucius looked upon Ben Trimble as a higher type of money getter than himself. Ben not only knew the farming game, but he was a clever business man and could explain to his gray-bearded neighbor the inner secrets of trade and traffic as it was practiced by the quick-witted, crafty men of the metropolis. Such a man would make a "good pervider" for his daughter, one who would not waste the Owen dollars, but rather would continually augment them. This then was the real, though sordid reason, why old Lucius was in favor of having the