Callista sighed and turned impatiently towards her young brother-in-law.
"Where do the men live?" she asked finally, very low, as though half-unwilling to do so.
"Well, Daggett ain't makin' what he expected to, and first they had to camp and cook and do for theirselves. Now they've built 228 shacks—out'n the flawed boards, you know—and all of 'em fetched a quilt or a blanket or such from home, so they can roll up at night on the floor. Fletch Daggett's wife is cooking for 'em. The day I was there they had white beans and corn bread—and a little coffee. She's a mighty pore cook, and she's got three mighty small chaps under foot."
Callista's mind went to the new, clean, well-arranged little home on Lance's Laurel. Did old Fletch Daggett's slovenly, overworked young wife cook any worse than she, Callista, had been able to?
"It's hot in them board shacks," Sylvane went on reflectively; "the hottest place I ever was in. Somebody stole Lance's comb. There ain't but one wash pan—he goes down to the branch—and he hid his comb. It's a rough place. They fight a good deal."
And this was what Lance had preferred to her and to the home he had built for her. She fell into such a study over it that Sylvane's voice quite startled her when he said,
"I—I aimed to ask ye, Callisty—did you want me to take word for Lance to come home?"
"No," she answered him very low. "It ain't my business to bid Lance Cleaverage come to his own home. Don't name it to me again, Sylvane, please."
The lad regarded her anxiously. More than once he opened his 229 lips to speak, only to close them, again. Slowly the red surged up over his tanned young face, until it burned dark crimson to the roots of his brown hair.
"I—you—w'y, Callisty," he faltered in a choked, husky whisper, his eyes beseeching forgiveness for such an offense against mountaineer reserve and delicacy.