Not unkindly Callista pushed the clinging arm away and looked straight into Rilly's eyes, overflowing with tears.
"You're not thinkin' what you say, Rilly," she told the girl, almost sharply. "You never come a-past no house of mine. You are in the only house I've got on earth right now, and this belongs to Grandfather Gentry. I stay here on sufferance, and work for what I get. I've got no home but this."
"Oh, Callisty—you're so hard-hearted!" Rilly protested. "We come a-past, and he was thar, an' he never hid from us, like he does from most, nor shet the do' in our faces. He let us set on the porch a spell. Oh, honey, he looks mighty porely. Ain't you never scared about what he might do? Heap o' folks tells tales about him now; but he came out jest as kind—jest like he used to be—Oh, Callisty!"
Callista's face was very pale; it looked pinched; she sat staring straight ahead of her, with the air of one who endures the babble of a forward child.
"Rilly," she said finally, when the other had made an end, 319 "you've named something that I don't allow anybody to name in my hearing. If you and me are going to be friends, you've said your last word about it to me."
"Well,—I have, then," returned the visitor half angrily. She searched in a small bag she carried hung on her arm and brought out something. "I've said my last word, then," she repeated. "But—I brung you this."
"This" proved to be a late rose marked by frost, its crimson petals smitten almost to black at their edges. Callista knew where it had grown, she recalled the day that she and her bridegroom had planted it. The root came from Father Cleaverage's place; Lance had brought it to her; and he had helped her well, and watered the little bush afterward.
Rilly cast the blossom toward her with a gesture half despair, half reproach. It lodged in her clasped hands a moment, and she looked down at it there. Memory of that October day, the tossing wind that blew her hair in her eyes, the familiar little details of the dooryard, Lance with his mattock and spade, the laughter and simple speech, the bits of foolish jest and words of tenderness—these took her by the throat and made her dumb. She knew that now the cabin which fronted that dooryard was desolate. She could not refuse to see Lance's solitary figure moving from house to fence to greet these two. Somehow she 320 guessed that it was he who had plucked the rose and given it to the girl—that would be like Lance.
The blossom slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor. Young Ajax, cruising about seeking loot, discovered it with a crow of rapture, seized upon it and began, baby fashion, to pull it to pieces.
The three watched with fascinated eyes as the fat little fingers rent away crimson petal after petal, till all the floor was strewn with their half withered brightness.