ked out on the porch
and seated himself on the steps. The girls disposed themselves at a
little distance--your mountain-bred young female is ever obviously shy,
almost to prudery.

"Whar's Johnnie Consadine?" asked the newcomer lazily, disposing himself
with his back against a post and his long legs stretched across the
upper step.

"Settin' in thar, readin' a book," replied Beulah Catlett curtly. Beulah
was but fourteen, and she belonged to the newer dispensation which
speaks up more boldly to the masculine half of creation. "Johnnie!
Johnnie Consadine!" she called through the casement. "Here's Mr.
Buckheath, wishful of your company. Better come out."

"I will, after a while," returned Johnnie absently. "I've got to help
Aunt Mavity some, and then I'll be there."

"Hit's a sight, the books that gal does read," complained Beulah. "Looks
like a body might get enough stayin' in the house by workin' in a cotton
mill, without humpin' theirselves up over a book all evenin'."

"Mr. Stoddard lends 'em to her," announced Mandy importantly. "He used
to give 'em to Miss Lyddy Sessions, and she'd give 'em to Johnnie; but
now when Miss Lyddy's away, he'll bring one down to the mill about every
so often, and him an' Johnnie'll stand and gas and talk over what's in
'em--I cain't understand one word they say. I tell you Johnnie
Consadine's got sense."

Her pride in Johnnie made her miss the look of rage that settled on
Buckheath's face at her announcement. The young fellow was glad when Pap
Himes began to speak growlingly.

"Yes, an' if she was my gal I'd talk to her with a hickory about that
there business. A gal that ain't too old to carry on that-a-way ain't
too old to take a whippin' for it. Huh!"

For her own self Mandy would have been thoroughly scared by this attack;
in Johnnie's defence she rustled her feathers like an old hen whose one
chick has been menaced.

"Johnnie Consadine is the prettiest-behaved gal I ever seen," she
announced shrilly. "She ain't never said nor done the least thing that
she hadn't ort. Mr. Stoddard he just sees how awful smart she is, and he
loves to lend her books and talk with her about 'em afterward. For my
part I ain't never seen look nor motion about Mr. Gray Stoddard that
wasn't such as a gentleman ort to be. I know he never said nothin' he
ort not to _me_."

The suggestion of Stoddard's making advances of unseemly warmth to Mandy
Meacham produced a subdued snicker. Even Pap smiled,