Callista opened her beautiful eyes wide, and smiled with lazy scorn.
"Truly, I'm suited with whatever Lance Cleaverage builds, and wherever and whenever he builds. Let it be what it may, it's nothing to me."
"You Rilly!" called a shrill feminine voice from the direction of the church. "Bring the basket."
"Help me with it, Buck," said Aurilla, and the two started down the slope together.
"Now," suggested Lance, with an affectation of reluctance, "if the rest of you-all don't mind giving us the place here, I reckon Callista's got a heap that she wants to say to me, 11 and she's ashamed to speak out before folks."
The mad project of a Sunday dance, which nobody but Ola Derf had entertained for a moment, was thus tacitly dropped. There was a general snickering at Lance's impudent assumption. Again Callista seemed too placidly contemptuous to care to make denial. Boys got up from their lounging positions on the grass, girls shook out their skirts, and two and two the young folks began to straggle toward the gray little church.
"You're a mighty accommodatin' somebody," observed Lance, dropping lightly on the grass at Callista's feet. "I have been told by some that you'd make a contentious wife; but looks to me like you're settin' out to be powerful easy goin'. Ain't got a word to say about how many rooms in the house, nor whar the shelves is to be, nor nothin'—eh?"
Reckless of time or place he reached up, put a finger under her chin, and turned her face toward him, puckering his lips meditatively as though he meant to kiss her—or to whistle. He got a swift, stinging slap for his pains, and Callista faced around on the rock where she sat to put herself as far from him as might be.
"Who said anything about wives and husbands?" she demanded. "I was talking about you building on yo' land. Hit's nothin' to me. I never expect to live in the houses you build, nor so much 12 as set foot in 'em. When you named that girl that was tryin' to wed you, I shorely thought you must have been meanin' Ola Derf. As for me, if you heard me talkin' of the house I expected to live in, you'd hear a plenty—because I'm particular. I ain't a-going to put up with no puncheon floor in my best room. Hit's got to be boards, and planed at that. I ain't a-goin' to break my back scouring puncheons for no man."
Lance nodded, with half closed eyes. It was plain he got her message. One guessed that the house would be made to please her, and, too, that he liked her the better for being fastidious.