"She was bound an' determined that Ma'-Ann-Marth' shouldn't 134 neither," Sylvane took up the story. "But the chap helt her breath—didn't ye, Pretty?—an' looked like she'd never ketch it again; so Sis' Roxy give in."
"Hey, Unc' Lance's gal!" the bridegroom hailed her, as the fat little bundle was passed down to him from the old buckboard, and instantly caught around his neck, hugging hard, and rooting a delighted face against his cheek.
It was nearly eight o'clock when Ola Derf rode up alone and came in. Mountain people are so courteous to each other as to make those who do not understand call them deceitful. Ola was received as amiably as such an invader might have been in the best of urban society. She looked with round, avid eyes at everything about her, and finally at the bride, her hostess.
"An' you a-wearin' them slippers," she commented. "I told Lance I knowed in reason you would." The remark was made in the further room, where the girls were laying off their things and putting them down on that bed where Callista, a little bewildered by the unsolicited loan, had spread forth the wonderful gospel quilt.
"Did you he'p Lance to choose Callisty's slippers?" asked Ellen Hands.
Rilly Trigg and Little Liza stopped in the door to listen. Octavia Gentry turned from the shelves she was examining. Even Polly ceased to stare across the open entry into the other room where most of the men were.
"Yes," said Ola, composedly, seating herself on the floor to 135 adjust her own footwear. "He was at our house a-wantin' to buy dancin' slippers for Callisty, and 'course he knowed I would understand what was needed. I reckon Callisty couldn't tell him, so he brought one of her shoes in his pocket, and axed me. Do they fit ye, Callisty?"
A curious change had come over the bride's face, yet it was calm and even fairly smiling, as she answered indifferently,
"No. I wasn't aimin' to wear 'em. I just tried them on. They' too big for me." And she closed the door and went resolutely to a chest in the corner, from which she took her heavy, country-made shoes to replace the slippers Lance's love had provided.
The Derf girl regarded her askance.