"Now, if Callisty could only dance, we'd shore see fun," Ola Derf suggested.
Lance looked to where his bride stood, aloof, mute, with bitten lip, listening to what her mother whispered in her ear. Yes, he was alone once more; she was with the enemy. His glance took the girl in from head to foot. He saw that she had removed his first gift, the slippers.
"Callista can dance about as much as you can play, Rill," he said mockingly.
The bride lowered white lids over scornful eyes and turned her back. Rilly laid down the banjo. A couple of the boys began to pat.
"Come on, Lance," whispered Ola defiantly. "I dare ye to dance. I bet yo' scared to."
A dare—it was Lance Cleaverage's boast that he would never take a dare from the Lord Almighty. He flung himself lightly into position. "Pat for us. Buck, cain't you?" he suggested half derisively. Then, with a swift, graceful bending of the lithe body, he saluted his partner and began.
The Derf girl was a muscular little creature; she moved with the tirelessness of a swaying branch in the wind; and Lance himself 150 was a wonder, when he felt like dancing. The circle of young people mended itself and grew closer. The two in the middle of the floor advanced toward each other, caught hands, whirled, retreated, and improvised steps to the time of Fuson's spatting palms.
It was a pretty enough sight, and innocent, except for what had gone before. Roxy Griever had retired in some disarray, upon Lance's sarcastic coupling of her name with that of Flenton Hands. Now, coming into the room with the supposition in her mind that everything was settled in a proper way, she caught sight of the two and stiffened into rigidity. For a moment she stared; then, as the full meaning of the scene burst upon her, she made three long steps to where the youthful Polly stood, taking in everything with big, enjoying eyes, seized her by the scant, soiled homespun frock, and hauled her backward from the room, Polly clawing, scrabbling, hanging to the door frame as she was snatched through.
"Poppy," shrilled the widow, in the direction of peaceful old Kimbro, using the tone of one who cries fire, "you kin stay ef yo're a mind—an' Sylvane can do the same. The best men I ever knowed—'ceptin' preachers—has a hankerin' for sin. Ma'y-Ann-Marth', she's asleep, an' what she don't see cain't hurt her. But as for me, I'm a-goin' to take this here child home where 151 she won't have the likes of that to look at. I feel jest as if it was some ketchin' disease, and the fu'ther you git away from it, the safer you air."
The last of these words trailed back from the dark, into which the Widow Griever and her small, reluctant charge were rapidly receding.