ndow, went
back to rolling out the dough vigorously, with only the muttered
comment, "Wish The'dosia didn't know how much I'd like that man fur a
son-in-law, then she'd be willin' ter like him better herse'f."

He was unconscious of them all, as he leaned his elbow on the
projecting rails of the fence at their intersection close at hand.

"Hev ye hed yer health, The'dosia?" he said.

"Don't I look like it?" she replied laughingly.

There was something both of cordiality and coquetry in her manner. Her
large eyes narrowed as she laughed, and albeit they glittered between
their closing lids, the expression was not pleasant. Levity did not
become her.

"Yes, ye do," he said seriously. "Ye 'pear ter be real thrivin' an'
peart an' healthy."

His look, his words, were charged with no sort of recognition or value
of her beauty: clearly her challenge had fallen to the ground
unnoticed.

"He'd like me jes' ez well ef I war all pitted up with the smallpox,
or ez freckled ez a tur-r-key-aig," she thought, flushing with
irritation.

Beauty is jealous of preeminence, and would fain have precedence even
of love. She could take no sort of satisfaction in a captive that her
bright eyes had not shackled. Somehow this love seemed to flout, to
diminish, her attractions. It was like an accident. She could account
for his subjection on no other grounds. As she sat silent, grave
enough now and very beautiful, gazing askance and troubled upon him,
he went on:--

"I war so oneasy an' beset lest suthin' hed happened on the mounting,
whilst I war away, ter trouble you-uns or some o' yer folks. I never
hed time ter study much 'bout sech in the day, but I dreamt 'bout ye
in the night, an' _all night_,"--he laughed a little,--"all sort'n
mixed up things. I got ter be a plumb Joseph fur readin' dreams--only
I could read the same one forty diff'rent ways, an' every way made me
a leetle mo' oneasy than the t'other one. I s'pose ye hev been perlite
enough ter miss me a leetle," he concluded.

She flashed her great eyes at him with a pretended stare of surprise.
"My--no!" she exclaimed. "We-uns hev hed the comet ter keep us
comp'ny--we ain't missed nobody!"

He laughed a little, as at a repartee, and then went on:--

"Waal, the comic war a-cuttin' a pretty showy figger down yander at
Colbury. 'Ston-ishin' how much store folks do 'pear ter set on it!
They hed rigged up some sort'n peepin'-glass in the Court-House yard,
an' thar war might