And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and even scolded, that ended the argument.
"I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to bid, mother?"
That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled, realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton Hands.
As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost indignantly.
"Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I 78 don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when you've just been promised."
Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed departure a moment, and then he delivered himself.
"I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two families."
"Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone. "This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to that talk."
"I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did," observed Gentry; "for I would—and do. Lance Cleaverage has took up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."
A coquette according to mountain ideals, carrying her head high 79 with the boys, famous for her bickerings with Lance, Callista Gentry had always been a model at home, quiet, tractable, obedient. But the face she now turned upon her grandfather was that of a young fury. All her cold pride was up in arms. That secret, still spirit of hers, haughty, unbent, unbroken, reared itself to give the old man to understand that she wanted nothing of him from this on. She—Lance's wife—the idea of her begging food from Grandfather Gentry!