"Uh-huh," he agreed, "you've come home—and I always knowed you would."
Octavia turned on him crying in a voice more tremulous with tears than anger,
"Now, Pap Gentry—"
But Callista interposed, with the faintest flicker of her old fire,
"Let him have his say. I told you-all once, standin' right here on this porch, that I'd never come home to this house with empty hands—that I'd bring something. Well, I have. I've brought this child."
Octavia was striving to take the baby from his mother's arms, to draw Callista into the house. At this she began to cry,
"Make her hush, Pap Gentry," she pleaded. "Don't set there and let my gal talk that-a-way!"
But old Ajax, remembering the turbulent days of his youth, knowing from his own wild heart in those long past days the anger that burned in Callista, and must have way, wisely offered 279 no interference.
"I've come home to stay," Callista pursued bitterly, "and I've brought my boy. But ye needn't be afraid of seein' us come. Sence I lived here I've learned how to work. I can earn my way, and his, too."
"Callista," sobbed the mother, clinging to her daughter, still seeking to draw her forward, "you're welcome here; and, if anything, the boy is welcomer. We ain't got nobody but you. Pappy, make her welcome; tell her that we're proud to have her as long as she's willin' to stay, and—and—" she hesitated desperately—"we'd be proud to have Lance, too."