“Was he barefoot when you come acrost him?”
“Yes. Carliny, she’d manage it so that poor little soul wouldn’t go caperin’ about at night.”
“Them boots has taken to theirselves wings.”
“I’m afraid Carliny’s goin’ to freeze to death up there this winter—or starve—one.”
“Them boots had blue tops; they was Grover Cleveland’s own choice; blue always takes his eye.”
“It’s time we was movin’ on, Suly,” said Thad going to the door.
The girl had to stop beating the bush. “Carliny and Jakey ain’t a-doin’ any good up there, Colonel Ledbetter; they’re both a-lookin’ puny. She wants you and you want her, and Grover Cleveland, he wants her powerful, poor little soul! ’Tain’t right, nor Christian, nor human, nor common sense, nor horse sense, nor nonsense, nor any kind of sense for you to be so set. She’s your own flesh”—she stopped, awed by his steady stare at her.
“You go home,” he said, “and you sew the tuck back into that ar frock you wore to Missouri’s quiltin’ and you wear it and be a little gal again till you’re smart enough not to handle no such talk as that in my house. Carliny, she made her own bed and thar she must lie. I told her when she married that ar no-’count that she shouldn’t never put foot into house of mine again; and you go ask your daddy if he ever knowed a Ledbetter to go back on his word. And I’m bringin’ up Grover Cleveland the same way; he believes like I do; he thinks Carliny’d ought to go her own gait now.”
Arsula went out of the house with her hand to her eyes.
“I ’low you mean right,” he said softening a little, “and I’m a heap o’ times obliged to you for bringin’ him home, but you ain’t no call to go to interferin’ in my family affairs.”