“He’ll wonder who put ’em there,” she whispered to herself. “Ef nothin’ else don’t take his eye, these here is shore to.”
Chapter VI
The Play-Party
Long lanes of light crossed the grass from window and door of the Turrentine house; Judith’s play-party was in full swing. They were dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those altitudes, had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its illumination became necessary, for all the lamps and candles available were in use out where the tables were spread.
Old Jephthah held state in his own quarters, a detached log cabin standing about thirty feet from the main structure, and once used probably to house the loom or for some such extra domestic purpose. Here too a fire smoldered on the hearthstone, for the head of the Turrentine clan was tormented by rheumatism, that plague of otherwise healthy primitive man. He lounged now on the doorstep, smoking, ready to intercept and entertain any of the older men who might come with their women folk. Occasionally somebody rode up, or came tramping down the trail or through the woods—a belated merrymaker hurrying in to ask who had arrived and who was expected.
To the father’s intense disgust Jim Cal had elected to sit with the elders that night, and obstinately held his place before the hearthstone in the cabin room. Jephthah Turrentine’s sons were none of them particularly satisfactory to their progenitor. A man of brains, a creature to whom an argument was ever more than the mere material thing argued about, these male offspring, who took their traits naturally after the spindle side, vexed him with resemblance to their handsome, high-tempered, brainless mother. But Jim Cal was worse than a bore to his father; the old fellow regarded a son who weighed above two hundred pounds as a disgrace. And to-night the fact that the door of his room commanded a sidelong view of the tables which were being spread, and about which Iley circled and scolded, furnished so fair a reason for James Calhoun’s selection of it as an anchorage that his father was the more offended.
“You thar, Unc’ Jep?” sounded Blatchley Turrentine’s careless voice from the dark.
“I make out to be,” returned his uncle lazily.