"Ain't you afeared you'll make him mad ef you take 'em off?" she asked finally. "I know he aims to have you dance befo' he's done with it, and you cain't noways dance in them thar things," looking with disfavor at the clumsy shoes.
"Callista doesn't dance, and she ain't a-goin' to," Octavia Gentry was beginning with some heat, when her daughter interrupted.
"Never mind, Mother," she said with dignity. "I ain't aimin' to dance, and I reckon you're not. Maybe Ola's mistaken in regards to Lance."
The Derf girl laughed shortly, deep in her throat. Before she 136 could speak, the closed door jarred open, revealing Roxy Griever, with a stout switch in her hand.
"Whar's Polly," the newcomer inquired wrathfully.
"Mighty glad to see you, Sis' Roxy," cried Callista, welcoming the diversion, but looking with surprise at her sister-in-law's draggled gingham on which the night dews of Laurel Gulch lay thick, her grim visage, and her switch. "Polly—she was here a minute ago."
But Polly, wise with the wisdom of her sex, had flown to Lance, and now she hid behind him, clinging like a limpet.
"Come in, Sis' Roxy. We're proud to see you here," shouted Lance, with an impudent disregard of anything amiss, and a new householder's enthusiastic hospitality.
"Did you send me word that you was a-goin' to have me call off the dances?" the widow demanded in an awful voice.
Her scrapegrace brother laughed in her face.