The chance was too good to lose. Derf instantly ceased 121 chuckling, reached down in a capacious pocket and hauled up a great wallet, out of which he began to count the money, looking up furtively every moment to see if Lance had been only jesting, or if his temper and that reckless spirit of his were sufficiently roused to carry through the outrageous trade. But when the few bills and the bit of silver were ready, Lance took them, put them carelessly into his pocket without the usual careful fingering and counting, and wheeled Satan toward the road.
"Ain't you goin' to tell a body 'howdy'?" came a treble hail from the cabin as he did so, and Ola Derf's small face, still disfigured from her tears of last night, presented itself at the doorway. "Lance, wait a minute—I want to speak with you," the girl called; and then she came running down to the fence and out into the road. "Was you and Pap a-fussin'? Ye ain't goin' to be mad with us becaze Callista and her folks never was friendly with us, air ye?" she inquired doubtfully, looking up at him with drowned eyes.
Pity stirred Lance's heart. Poor little thing, she had always been a friendly soul, since the two were tow-headed tykes of six playing hookey together from the bit of summer school, as devoted as a dog, observant of his mood and careful of all his preferences. It was rare for her to thrust upon him her own distress, or to let him see her other than cheerful, eagerly 122 willing to forward his plans. And he remembered with resentment that both at his own home and Callista's after some heated discussion of his proposition to invite the Derfs, he had said they could have it their own way, and no invitation had been given.
"Well, you and me ain't going to fuss, anyhow, are we, Ola?" he said heartily. "I bid you to the infare at my house to-night. I was just gettin' the money from your father to buy some things that Callista'll need for it."
Square, stubbed, the little brown girl stood at the roadside shading her gaze with one small, rough hand, looking up at the mounted man with open, unchanged adoration. Her eyes—the eyes of an ignorant little half savage—enlightened by love, valued accurately the perfect carriage of his shapely head on the brown throat, the long, tapering line from waist to toe, as he sat at ease in the saddle. Who of them all was the least bit like Lance, her man of men, with his quizzical smile, his blithe, easy mastery of any situation?
"Hit's too late now for you to go away down yon to the store, ain't it. Lance?" the girl asked him timidly. "Don't you want to come in and see the new things Pappy brung up from the Settlement? I believe in my soul he's got the prettiest dancin' shoes I ever laid my eyes on—but Callista don't dance," she amended.
Lance sighted at the sun. He was entirely too late for a trip to 123 Hepzibah—he knew that. The shoe in his pocket nudged him in the side and suggested that this was the place for buying Callista's slippers. Without more ado he sprang from Satan's back, flung the reins over a fence post, and followed Ola into the big shed where the goods for the new store were piled heterogeneously on the floor.