The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 18??-1882, 1881-07-29
Written for The Times.
GeOrgiana Ganson.
CHAPTER III.
BY AN owossoAN.

Old Peter Yost had been a PAINS
taking and faithful tenant of Deacon
Azariah Ganson's, for many years, and
as the Deacon was in all business mat
tiers exact and punctuaL Yost had
grown to regard him with great re-
spect, and to reverence his christian
professions. He was an open-hearted,
bluff, old farmer, who having fairly
settled it in his mind that Ganson was
a good man, did not hesitate to an
nounce it, as some people do for fear
that the blazonry of their neighbors,
character will somehow eclipse their
own.
"Say what we mind ter, about
the Deekin," said Peter, as he sat one
day on the counter in Weston's store,
she's honest and Straightforward, and
that'll pass consid' BILE muster.''
swell, he's no doubt honest in his
DEAL" answered the merchant, "but
he's devilish queer man to say the least
to keep his girl the way he does-a
little girl only eleven or twelve years
old, and yet prevented from going
anywhere with the other children
Little selfshness there, l reckon!"
81 don't blame him a & ,lldarned
bit for it," replied the farmer. ''Her
mothers dead, and she haint got no.
body but him tn see tn her, and the
job looks so big tn him, that he feels
that all the hands and eyes he's got
can't du it! I'd ruther have a hun
dred boys than one gal. They seem
tn know how how tn take things, in
stead of grabbin on tn him, as young
men kinp
Weston thought of Myra, and was
silent. He was man who like the
average New Highlander, was easily
prejudiced, but he had some fine
chords in his nature, and he walked
out to the end of his store and looked
down toward his house. Somehow
his heart warmed toward old Yost,
and the more so because he discover
ed rich vein of truth and sentiment
in him.
Yost got down from the COUNTER
picked up two or three little packages
that had been put up for him, and
went out down the road to the farm.
Weston locked after him as he went
away, and wished that he was a farm
er, turning up the fresh earth to the
smiling sun. or even that he was Dea-
con Ganson, independent Of his Gus
toners, and able to take his child in
in his arms and carry her right out of
the republic Of children. But he de-
pended on his trade which would not
tolerate exclusiveness and which seem
to say, eff your stock of goods goes
out, Myra must go tool" And SO My
ra continued to run in the freest and
most unConstrained manner Of child
rem, and at the age of twenty as we
have seen, declared herself sorry for
Miss Ganson,
But old Peter Yost had new expe-
rience, when, some days after, he sent
his son Henry over to the Deacons to
inquire what he would have done with
certain patch of ground about which
there had been no direction, and
learned that Ganson was vexed be-
cause his daughter had opened the
door for him. If there was one thing
in the world he prided himself on, it
was Henry. And this was chiefly be-
cause he was so unlike himself. Henry
was palefaced lad of fifteen years
Of fine thoughtful face-who had a
great thirst for books, and seemed al
together too sslender for farm work.
The boy was proud creature too,
and came home from the Deacon S
filled with boyish wrath, and said more
perhaps than Ganson would like to
have heard. Peter fairly boiled over.
He declared tibet he would quit the
Deacon's farm. However, his wife
who was a quiet and cautious person,
succeeded in keeping the expressions
of anger entirely within the family
circle, and Yost went on with his la
Dor as before. But Henry was not
quoted so easily. He often said, 81
can't see anything SO devilish fine
about that girl of Ganson's, that he
should be SO scared about her, Myra
Weston is much prettier than she is,
and her father don't bother himself
to keep her from opening doors fol
decent people !"
However time--as at last time al.
ways wlll-hushed the voice of enmity,
and if like a serpent the passion lay
silent and concealed in the recesses oil
the hearts of the Yosts, it was SC
nearly dead as to give no trouble al
the time in which our story opens.
Everybody now accepted it as a fact
that social life with the jewellers in
the little town, was the one thing the
Gansons would not have, and so they
proclaimed mutual aversion to any
terms of intimacy with the Deacon
and his "royal family" as it was gen.
orally called by way of slur and satire
There was a mystery about Deacon
Azariah Ganson. A man who does
no trading in the little town where he
chances to live, and who receives no
body, will always afford much mate
rial for those conjectures and conjur.
ings which always result in what i:
called mystery. A man becomes com
mon, who shows his pocket-book to
his neighbors, or carries their salt and
sugar in his arms. Much is taken
away from him by meeting him in his
own house. None of these things de.
tracted from Ganson. He was coldly