"Yes, I did," rumbled Little Liza from the chair on which she stood adjusting the top of a window curtain.
"I thought I heared Lance's banjo awhile ago," added the widow 90 as she folded and disposed of the garments she had brought in, "and then I didn't hear it any more. I have obliged to get hold of Callista to tell me whar she wants these things put at."
"Yes, and you did hear Lance Cleaverage's banjo," confirmed Little Liza sadly. "Callisty heared it, too. She come a-steppin' down from her room like as if he'd called her, and she's walked herself out of the front door and up the road alongside o' him, and that's why you don't hear the banjo no more."
"Good land!" cried the mother-in-law that was to be. "I don't know what young folks is thinkin' of—no, I don't. It ain't respectable for a bride and groom to walk side by side on their weddin' day. Everybody knows that much. And I've got to have Callista here. Roxy Griever's sent word that she cain't come to the weddin' because its been given out to each and every that they'd be dancin'. I want Callista to see Lance and have that stopped. Hit's jest some o' Lance's foolishness. You know in reason its got to be stopped. Oh, Sylvane!" as a boyish figure appeared in the doorway. "Won't you go hunt up Callista and tell her I want her? And you tell yo' sister Roxy when you go home that there ain't goin' to be any dancin' here tonight. And just carry these here pans out to the springhouse whilst you're about 91 it, Sylvane. And if you find Ellen Hands there tell her to come on in to me, please. I vow, nobody's been for the cows! Sylvane, whilst you're out you go up to the milk gap and see are they waitin' thar. Let down the draw-bars for 'em if they are."
Fifteen-year-old Sylvalnus Cleaverage laughed and turned quickly, lest further directions be given him.
"All right," he called back. "I'll 'tend to most of those things—as many of 'em as I can remember."
A privileged character, especially among the women, Sylvane made willing haste to do Octavia's errands. The boy was like his brother Lance with the wild tang left out, and feminine eyes followed his young figure as he hurried from spring-house to pasture lot. When he found Lance and Callista walking hand in hand at the meadow's edge he gave them warning, so that the girl might slip in through the back door, innocently unconscious of any offence against the etiquette of the occasion, and the bridegroom pass on down the big road, undiscovered.
"I reckon it's jest as well as 'tis," commented old Ajax from the security of the front door-yard, to which he had been swept out and cleaned out in the course of the preparations. "Ef 92 Octavy had been give a year's warnin', she would have been jest about tearin' up Jack this-a-way for the whole time."
As evening fell, teams began to arrive, and the nearer neighbors came in on foot, with a bustle of talk and a settling of the children. Old Kimbro Cleaverage brought his daughter, Roxy Griever, with little Polly Griever, a relative of Roxy's deceased husband, and Mary Ann Martha.
"I knowed in reason you wouldn't have dancin' on yo' place," the widow shrilled, as she approached. Then as she climbed out over the wheel, she added in a lower tone to Little Liza Hands, who had come out to help her down, "But that thar sinful Lance is so pestered by the davil that you never know whar he'll come up next, and I sont Miz. Gentry the word I did as a warnin'. Tham men has to be watched."