On the Doorstone
Behind them the play was resumed in the lighted room; the whining of the fiddle, the thud and stamp of many feet, came to them softened and refined by a little distance. They were suddenly drawn together in that intimacy of two who leave the company and the lights on a special expedition. Judith made an impatient mental effort to release the incident of Huldah and the kiss, which had so unreasonably irritated her.
“If we was to go acrosst fields hit would be a heap better,” she advised softly, and they moved through the odorous, myriad-voiced darkness of the midsummer night, side by side, without speech, for a time. Then as Creed halted at a dim, straggling barrier which crossed their course and laid down a rail fence partially that she might the more easily get over in her white frock, she returned to the tormenting subject once more, opening obliquely:
“You and Huldy Spiller is old friends I reckon. Don’t you think she’s a powerful pretty girl?”
“Mighty pretty,” echoed Creed absently. All girls were of an even prettiness to him, and Huldah Spiller was a pleasant little thing. He was wondering what he had done back there in the play-room that had set them all against him.
“Her and Wade is goin’ to be wedded come September,” put in Judith jealously.
“Yo’ cousin will be getting a mighty fine wife.”
The mountain man is apt to make his comments on the marriages of his friends with dignified formality, and Creed uttered the accustomed phrase without heat or enthusiasm; but it seemed to Judith that he might have said less—or more.
“Well, I never did like red hair,” the girl managed to get out finally; “but I reckon hit’s better than old black stuff like mine.”
“My mother’s hair was sorter sandy,” Creed answered in his gentle, tolerant fashion. “Mine favours it.” And he had not the wit to add that dark hair, however, pleased him best.