“Wanta go West, huh! Grow up with th’ country—’sthat it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The sky-blue eyes twinkled, and one of them bestowed a prodigious wink on Mrs. Mundy. “Well, now, what could ye do? Think ye could skin Jack an’ Ned on roller-skates?”—and Bloodmop laughed loudly at his own joke.
“He means drive a team of mules,” Madge explained. “On the railroad grade a span of mules are always called Jack and Ned.” Then to her father: “Don’t try to tease him, Pa. He’s had enough trouble, I’d think.”
“Well, he’s lookin’ f’r more,” laughed Bloodmop Mundy. “It’s a sure thing there’s plenty o’ trouble on the railroad grade. Well, kid, you stick around to-day and I’ll think it over. Yes, sir, I’ll just do that. Ma, I bet ye don’t know what I drifted in here for.”
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” asserted Mrs. Mundy, in a tone and with a smile that proved her speech a mild prevarication.
Bloodmop Mundy stepped to her side. “I was goin’ to drive the buckboard up town to see about some more hay,” he said. “And I thought I might be killed er somethin’ ’fore I got back.”
“In that case—” And here she lifted her face.
He bent over her, and never had Joshua seen a man’s face so tender as he kissed her softly on the lips. Joshua had seen his father peck at his mother’s lips when he would be leaving for a trip, and the coldness of it had made him consider the kiss of man and wife a sort of ceremony that must be endured. He realized that men loved women and women men, but it had never occurred to him that fathers and mothers loved each other.
“Thank ye, ma’am,” said Bloodmop Mundy. “And now I’ll throw the leather on the ponies an’ be gettin’ on. Anythin’ you want? Cook need anythin’?”