"If you two'll hush and let me speak," she said in an even tone, "I reckon I'll be able to set grandpappy's mind at rest. You can give me the wedding—I reckon you want to do so much as that for your own good name. But bite or sup I'll never take afterwards in this house. No, I won't. So far from carryin' victuals out of it, you'll see when I come in I'll have somethin' in my hand, grandpap. I invite you and mother right now to take yo' Sunday dinners with me when you want to ride as far as the Blue Spring church. But,"—she went back to it bitterly—"bite or sup in this house neither me nor Lance will ever take." Then, her eyes bright, her usually pale cheeks flaming, she turned and ran up the steep little stairs to her own room. Octavia looked reproach at her father-in-law; but Ajax Gentry spat scornfully toward the vacant fireplace, and demanded,
"Now she's a pretty somebody for a man to wed and carry to his 80 home, ain't she? I say, Sunday dinners with her! Can she mix a decent pone o' corn bread, and bake it without burnin' half her fingers off? She cain't. Can she cut out a hickory shirt and make it? She cain't. Could she kill a chicken and pick and clean it and cook it—could she do it ef she was a starvin'? She could not. She cain't so much as bile water without burnin' it. She don't know nothin'—nothin' but the road. She's shore a fine bargain for a man to git. To have a passel o' fool boys follerin' after her and co'tin' her, that's all Callisty's ever studied about, or all you ever studied about for her."
"Well, pappy," Octavia bridled, considerably stung, "I don't think you' got much room to talk. In yo' young days, from all I ever heared—either from you or from others—you was about as flighty with the gals, and had about as many of 'em follerin' after you, as Sis is with the boys."
She looked up at her father-in-law where he lounged against the fire-board. Grandly tall was old Ajax Gentry, carrying his seventy years and his crown of silver like an added grace. His blue eye had the cold fire of Callista's, and his lean sinewy body, like hers, showed the long, flowing curves of running water.
"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened circumflex 81 on the vowel that lent it a world of meaning. "O-o-o-oh! . . . a man! Well—that's mighty different. If a feller's got the looks—and the ways—he can fly 'round amongst the gals for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But when a man marries a gal, he wants a womern—a womern that'll keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right. The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow, I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time. Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort—yo' mighty right she wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, Big and Little. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated. "Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their victuals with 'em."
Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the door.
"All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the gal best I knowed how. I reckon you think the fault—sence you see so much fault in her—comes from my raisin'; but I know mighty well an' good that the only trouble I ever had with Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. How you can expect the 82 cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her, is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away toward the log stable to begin his harnessing.
Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous, semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental, examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out all the world and find once more that island of delight where they should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought.
It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and charm.
"Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her 83 sisters that his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively disrespectful.