“I will, on one condition,” she said, recovering her archness, with a little venom in it, I fear. “You were going home, too, when I called to you. Now, I do not intend to let you leave that bag behind that tree, and then have to come back for it, just because you feel obliged to go with me. Bring it with you on one arm, and I'll take the other, or else—I'll go alone. Don't be alarmed,” she added softly; “I'm stronger than I was the first night I came, when you carried me and all my worldly goods besides.”
She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and looked at him as she had the first night they met. Jeff turned away bewildered, but presently appeared again with the bag on his shoulder, and her wrap on his arm. As she slipped her little hand over his sleeve, he began, apologetically and nervously,
“When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I”—
The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.
“I was mad, miss,” Jeff blundered on, “and I don't see how you believed it—knowing everything ez you do.”
“How knowing everything as I do?” asked Miss Mayfield coldly.
“Why, about the quail, and about the bag!”
“Oh,” said Miss Mayfield.
Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utter amazement at an apparently simple spectacle—a tall, good-looking young fellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his back, and beside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small, slight, pretty girl in a red cloak. “Nothing mean about her, eh, Bill?” said as admiring box-passenger. “Young couple, I reckon, just out from the States.”
“No!” roared Bill.