“Come out of that corn!” A loud, harsh voice cut across David’s low-spoken speech, made them spring guiltily apart. “I ain’t going to stand for no such goings-on on my farm!”
Clem Carson had prowled like an angry, frustrated animal, through the fields until he had spied them out.
David and Sally had been sitting at the end of the corn field, in plain sight of anyone who cared to spy upon them. When Clem Carson’s harsh bellow startled them out of their innocent confidences David jumped to his feet, offering a hand to Sally, who was trembling so that she could scarcely stand.
“We’re not in the corn, Mr. Carson,” David called, his voice vibrating with indignation. “I’ll have to ask you to apologize for what you said, sir. There’s no harm in two young people watching the moon rise at ten o’clock.”
Carson came striding out of the corn. David, feet planted rather far apart, looked as if he were braced for attack, and the farmer, after an involuntary shrinking toward the shelter of the corn, advanced again, an apologetic smile on his brown face.
“Reckon I spoke hasty,” he conceded, “but Jim said he seen you two young-uns sneaking off into the corn and it got my dander up. I’m responsible to the orphanage for Sally, and I don’t aim to have her going back in disgrace. Better get back to the house, Sally, and go to bed, seeing as how you’ve got to be up at half-past four in the morning. You stay back a minute, Dave. I want to have a little talk with you.”
“I’m taking Sally to the house, Mr. Carson,” David said grimly.
On the walk back to the house there was no opportunity for David to reassure the frightened, trembling girl, for Carson plowed doggedly along behind them as they walked single file between the rows of corn. When they reached the kitchen, where Mrs. Carson was setting great pans of yeast bread to rise on the back of the range, Sally ran to the stairs, not pausing for a good-night.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, while she was sitting on the edge of her cot-bed, she heard David’s firm step on the back stairs, and knew that he had cut short the farmer’s “little talk” with him. Reckless of consequences she slipped out of her door, which she had left ajar, and crept along the dark hall to David’s door.
He did not see her at first, for she was only a faint blur in the dark, but at her whispered “David!” he paused, his hands groping for hers.