"Yes," broke in the Widow Griever's most rasping tones. "She called the game I was a-showin' the boys and gals a Virginia Reel, an' 'lowed she'd call off for us. Call off!" Roxy snorted. 142 "A lot of perfessin' Christians to dance—dance to Ola Derf's callin' off!"
Once more Lance's eye swept the circle of hostile, alien faces. His sense of fair play was touched. Also, he felt himself pushed outside and set to defending his solitary camp, with the whole front of respectability arrayed against him. This, so far as the others were concerned, was the usual thing; it daunted him not at all. But when he looked to Callista, and saw that at the first call she had left him—left him alone—arrayed herself with the enemy—a new, strange, stinging pain went through his spirit. He smiled, while odd lights began to bicker in his eyes.
"O-oo-oh," he said in a soft, careless voice, "didn't you-all know that I aim to have dancin'? Why, of course I do." And he walked away with head aslant, leaving them dumb.
It was but a retort, the usual quick defiance from the Lance Cleaverage who would not be catechized, reproved; yet when he entered the outer room and found Ola drawn over at one side, unfriended, while a knot of whispering girls, quite across the floor from her, cast glances athwart shoulders in her direction, the good will of old comradeship, the anger of the host who sees his guest mistreated, pushed forward his resolution.
"I reckon I'd better be goin' home," Ola said to the pale Callista, who followed her husband from the back room. "Looks 143 like I'm in the way here; and mebbe Lance ort not to have bid me—hit's yo' house."
The bride looked from her bridegroom to the brown girl strangely. In her own fashion, she was as unwilling to be outdone as Lance himself. "This here is Lance's house," she said coldly. "He bids them that he chooses to it. But I reckon he don't aim to have any dancin'."
Roxy Griever paused in the doorway and peered in.
"I reckon the trouble is that none of the folks here know how to dance," Ola was saying doubtfully. "Let's you and me show 'em, Lance. Come on."
Wildly, the sister cast about her for aid. Old Ajax regarded the scene with the same covert enjoyment he had given another domestic embroglio. Her father had slipped through a back door under pretense of seeing to the horse. Her glance fell on Flenton Hands. This was the man for her need.
Earlier in the evening, when Flenton made his appearance in Lance Cleaverage's house, accompanying his sisters, Octavia had murmured, "Well, I vow! Ef I'd 'a' been him, ox chains and plow lines couldn't have drug me here, after what was said an' done last night." Even Roxana had wondered at the cold obtuseness that could prompt the acceptance on Flent's part of that general 144 invitation Lance had flung back over his shoulder to the deserted wedding guests, and looked in vain to see what it was that Hands expected to gain by his attitude. There was some whispering and staring among the other guests, but Flenton Hands was admitted to be "quare," and his connection with the Settlement offered a ready means of accounting for his not doing things like other people. Now the Widow Griever felt that Providence—it is wonderful how people of her sort find Providence ever retained on their own side of the case—had dictated the attendance of this exemplary and godly person, second only in authority concerning church matters to Brother Drumright. She hastily dragged him aside, pouring out the whole matter, in voluble, hissing whispers, with many backward jerks of the head or thumb toward where Ola and Lance, in the midst of a group of boys and girls, still laughed and joked.