BILLY HILL Chapter Seven

Dry Goods Store
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With Billy's brothers getting married and his sisters having men callers, Billy began to think about the females he knew in a different way.  Many of the women his age had already been picked over, and most of what was left had undesirable shortcomings.

While traveling with Logan and selling from door to door, Billy had met many young women in the city, and was very comfortable talking to them.

When they went from farm to farm trying to sell anything they could to the farmers, many of them were broke, and had no money but most had daughters they would have liked to get married off.  Billy thought it was interesting to listen to the farmers trying to convince him their girls were just what he needed.

Several of them tried to quote the scripture by saying; “The Bible says; it is not good for man to dwell alone, and my daughter can solve that problem for you.”

That happened quite often during the three years he was with Logan. There was another thing that happened; sometimes Logan showed the wrong kind of interest in the girls, and they were run out of town more than once.

Back home there had been a revival at the church during the summer, and there was a lot of people that started to attend church that didn't usually go.

Billy was never interested in going to church except when they had special events but he began to go every once in awhile because most of his family had begun to attend regularly.  

There was a new family that had moved into town sometime back, and went to the church every Sunday. They had a daughter named Linda who was their only child, and they watched over her very closely.

The father had bought a dry goods store in town, which he and his wife ran, with help from their daughter. They always looked nice because they had all kinds of cloth and patterns to choose from and a tredle sewing machine.

  
The girl presented herself nicely, and because of her contact with people who came into the store she was able to carry on a conversation where many of the country girls couldn't.  

Billy took his sisters and his brothers wives to the store and bought them enough material to make several dresses.  While there he talked with the owner of the store, and realized he was an educated man, and had bought the store just so they could get by during these hard times.  He also introduced himself to the mother but purposefully never spoke to the daughter.

The one thing he noticed about the daughter was she didn't appear to dip snuff which was something many of the farm girls did.  

Even though some of the older members in his family either dipped or chewed tobacco; for Billy it was a complete turn off.  Growing up he would see the snuff and spit mixture running out of the side of the mouth where the snuff stick was and decided he would never, not ever kiss a girl who dipped.

When he objected to some of his family spitting in the fireplace they complained that he had become too citified.
 

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He found himself dropping in to the fabric store ever so often, and the only thing he could think of buying was some buttons for ten cents.

All the time he wanted to get to know the family, because if they had any secrets eventually they would come out.  

During his travels he had learned that all families have something they don't want aired out in the public.

Linda's mother told Billy that he could come in the store without buying anything, and if he wished to talk to Linda it would be alright.

This embarrassed him to no end, and he lied and said no, I like buttons.

To be Continued