oo,
that this might be her way of showing her resentment of the familiarity
that he had taken in calling her by her name.

The feeling of deputy-mastership was no longer important upon his
shoulders. He shrank down in his chair with a sense of drawing in, like
a snail, while he burned with humiliation and shame. The pinnacle of
manhood was too slippery for his clumsy feet; he had plumped down from
its altitudes as swiftly as he had mounted that morning under the spur
of duty. He was a boy, and felt that he was a boy, and far, far from
being anything nobler, or stronger, or better qualified to give saving
counsel to a woman older, if not wiser, than himself.

Perhaps it was Ollie's purpose to inspire such feeling, and to hold Joe
in his place. She was neither so dull, nor so unpractised in the arts of
coquetry, to make such a supposition improbable.

It was only when Joe sighted Morgan driving back to the farm late in the
afternoon that his feeling of authority asserted itself again, and
lifted him up to the task before him. He must let her understand that he
knew of what was going on between them. A few words would suffice, and
they must be spoken before Morgan entered the house again to pour his
poison into her ears.

Ollie was churning that afternoon, standing at her task close by the
open door. Joe came past the window, as he had crossed it that morning,
his purpose hot upon him, his long legs measuring the ground in immense,
swift steps. He carried his hat in his hand, for the day was one of
those with the pepper of autumn in it which puts the red in the apple's
cheeks.

Ollie heard him approaching; her bare arm stayed the stroke of the
churn-dasher as she looked up. Her face was bright, a smile was in her
eyes, revealing the clear depths of them, and the life and the desires
that issued out of them, like the waters of a spring in the sun. She was
moist and radiant in the sweat of her labor, and clean and fresh and
sweet to see.

Her dress was parted back from her bosom to bare it to the refreshment
of the breeze, and her skin was as white as the cream on the dasher, and
the crimson of her cheeks blended down upon her neck, as if the moisture
of her brow had diffused its richness, and spread its beauty there.

She looked at Joe, halted suddenly like a post set upright in the
ground, stunned by the revelation of the plastic beauty of neck and bare
bosom, and, as their eyes met, she smiled, lifted one white ar