"I don't know as I want to sell," the owner of Jesse Lance's Gap hundred observed indifferently, running random little chords on his banjo. "I ain't rightly studied about it."
"Well, I wish you would study about it," urged Callista. "I think it's your duty to."
"I think it's your duty to, duty to, dute,"
hummed Lance to a twanging accompaniment from the strings. "Looks like I've heard them words before somewheres. I'll be blessed if that ain't Sis' Roxy's tune you've took up, Callista!"
"Your sister does her duty in this world," asserted Callista tartly. "It's nothing but the mineral rights, they'll want. All that talk you had this mornin' about the land coming from your 270 gran'pappy, and your not wanting to leave it, is just to—to have your own way."
Lance raised his eyebrows.
"Would you say so?" he debated, his voice quiet, but the spark shining deep in his hazel eye. "Well now, I'd have said—if you'd axed me—that I've had my own way most generally without resorting to such. I'm ruther expectin' to have my own way from this time out, and take no curious methods of gettin' it."
"Well, what are you going to do about selling the land?" she persisted.
Lance lifted the baby's fat hand and pretended to pick the banjo strings with the pointed, inadequate fingers, to the young man's serious enjoyment. Callista waited for what she considered a reasonable time, and then prompted.
"Lance. Lance, did you hear me?"