Part 16 (1/2)
”Well, it would cipher out right close in that neighborhood.”
”Here's how, then!” cried the delighted Lin, over his cup.
”Jest because yu' happen to come from Vermont,” continued Mr. McLean, ”is no cause for extra pride. Shoo! I was raised in Ma.s.sachusetts myself, and big men have been raised there, too,--Daniel Webster and Israel Putnam: and a lot of them politicians.”
”Virginia is a good little old state,” observed the Southerner.
”Both of 'em's a sight ahead of Vermont. She told me I was the first exception she'd struck.”
”What rule were you provin' at the time, Lin?”
”Well yu' see, I started to kiss her.”
”Yu' didn't!”
”Shucks! I didn't mean nothin'.”
”I reckon yu' stopped mighty sudden?”
”Why, I'd been ridin' out with her--ridin' to school, ridin' from school, and a-comin' and a-goin', and she chattin' cheerful and askin'
me a heap o' questions all about myself every day, and I not lyin' much neither. And so I figured she wouldn't mind. Lots of 'em like it. But she didn't, you bet!”
”No,” said the Virginian, deeply proud of his lady who had slighted him.
He had pulled her out of the water once, and he had been her unrewarded knight even to-day, and he felt his grievance; but he spoke not of it to Lin; for he felt also, in memory, her arms clinging round him as he carried her ash.o.r.e upon his horse. But he muttered, ”Plumb ridiculous!”
as her injustice struck him afresh, while the outraged McLean told his tale.
”Trample is what she has done on me to-night, and without notice. We was startin' to come here; Taylor and Mrs. were ahead in the buggy, and I was holdin' her horse, and helpin' her up in the saddle, like I done for days and days. Who was there to see us? And I figured she'd not mind, and she calls me an exception! Yu'd ought to've just heard her about Western men respectin' women. So that's the last word we've spoke.
We come twenty-five miles then, she scootin' in front, and her horse kickin' the sand in my face. Mrs. Taylor, she guessed something was up, but she didn't tell.”
”Miss Wood did not tell?”
”Not she! She'll never open her head. She can take care of herself, you bet!” The fiddles sounded hilariously in the house, and the feet also.
They had warmed up altogether, and their dancing figures crossed the windows back and forth. The two cow-punchers drew near to a window and looked in gloomily.
”There she goes,” said Lin.
”With Uncle Hughey again,” said the Virginian, sourly. ”Yu' might suppose he didn't have a wife and twins, to see the way he goes gambollin' around.”
”Westfall is takin' a turn with her now,” said McLean.
”James!” exclaimed the Virginian. ”He's another with a wife and fam'ly, and he gets the dancin', too.”
”There she goes with Taylor,” said Lin, presently.
”Another married man!” the Southerner commented. They prowled round to the store-room, and pa.s.sed through the kitchen to where the dancers were robustly tramping. Miss Wood was still the partner of Mr. Taylor. ”Let's have some whiskey,” said the Virginian. They had it, and returned, and the Virginian's disgust and sense of injury grew deeper. ”Old Carmody has got her now,” he drawled. ”He polkas like a landslide. She learns his monkey-faced kid to spell dog and cow all the mawnin'. He'd ought to be tucked up cosey in his bed right now, old Carmody ought.”
They were standing in that place set apart for the sleeping children; and just at this moment one of two babies that were stowed beneath a chair uttered a drowsy note. A much louder cry, indeed a chorus of lament, would have been needed to reach the ears of the parents in the room beyond, such was the noisy volume of the dance. But in this quiet place the light sound caught Mr. McLean's attention, and he turned to see if anything were wrong. But both babies were sleeping peacefully.