She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence of coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have stood for indifference or dignity as she said: “I don't know. I am waiting to see.”
But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion that Mr. Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least he didn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did he usually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out of Noah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door. All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with a simulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. Lawrence Grant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absent Parmlee.
“But where is the front door?” asked Grant laughingly.
The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bank beside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the level of the road and store.
“But I should think it would be easier to have a door and private passage through the store,” said Grant.
“WE don't,” said the young lady pertly, “we have nothing to do with the store. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there's nobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's bad enough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near to us as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain't troubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek as far as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell pork and flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it.”
The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness were something rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly did not indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must have been some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt his respect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grant looked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile.
“But you must be very limited in your company,” he said; “or is Mr. Parmlee not a customer of your father's?”
“As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talk trade to me, we don't know,” responded Phemie saucily.
“But have you no lady acquaintances—neighbors—who also avoid the store and enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?” continued Grant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glances of Rice.