“That coffee smells as good as a weddin’,” said Reub Blakely.
“Speakin’ of weddin’s,” began Ira, looking towards Christine.
“But we’re not speaking of weddings and we don’t want to,” Alison interrupted him by saying. “What we want to speak about is where you have been all day and what your adventures were.”
“Give us leave to eat our supper first,” returned Ira. “I tell you when a fellow gits grub like this he wants to give his whole attention to it without side-tracking onto a narrative. Just you let us get outside that ham and coffee and a pile or so o’ them biscuits and we’ll talk to ye.”
Just then Louisa skurried off saying, “I guess I’ll lose my head next. I clean forgot that honey Pedro got for us. I ain’t got the best head in the world, for I’ve most jerked it off already.”
Ira observed her gravely. Any one who could make such biscuits and coffee appealed to his tenderest sensibilities. “What’s the young lady’s name?” he whispered audibly to Alison by whose side he sat. “I didn’t catch her cognomen, as Pike likes to call it.”
“Her name is Sparks, Louisa Sparks,” Alison told him.
Ira nodded in answer. His eyes followed Louisa when she went from the room to replenish the supplies and when he had finished his thirteenth biscuit he looked across the table and said: “Any kin o’ old Cy Sparks? Old man with a red head, he is.”
Louisa looked up surprised. “Why, my father’s name was Cyrus, but he’s been dead these fifteen years.”
“That so? Orphin?”