“I reckoned you'd be right lonely down there with that Stanner crowd, particklerly after that little speech o' your'n, so I sez to Maw I'd get you up yer for a spell. Maw and I heerd you exhort 'em! Maw allowed you woz talkin' a furrin' tongue all along, but I—sakes alive!—I hed to hump myself to keep from bustin' into a yell when yer jist drawed them Webster-unabridged sentences on 'em.” She stopped and rocked backwards and forwards with a laugh that, subdued by the proximity of the roof and the fear of being overheard, was by no means unmusical. “I'll tell ye whot got me, though! That part commencing, 'Suckamstances over which I've no controul.'”
“Oh, come! I didn't say that,” interrupted Hale, laughing.
“'Don't make it convenient for me to exercise the privilege of kickin' yer out to that extent,'” she continued; “'but if I cannot dispense with your room, the least I can say is that it's a d—d sight better than your company—'or suthin' like that! And then the way you minded your stops, and let your voice rise and fall just ez easy ez if you wos a First Reader in large type. Why, the Kernel wasn't nowhere. HIS cussin' didn't come within a mile o' yourn. That Stanner jist turned yaller.”
“I'm afraid you are laughing at me,” said Hale, not knowing whether to be pleased or vexed at the girl's amusement.
“I reckon I'm the only one that dare do it, then,” said the girl simply. “The Kernel sez the way you turned round after he'd done his cussin', and said yer believed you'd stay and take the responsibility of the whole thing—and did, in that kam, soft, did-anybody-speak-to-me style—was the neatest thing he'd seen yet. No! Maw says I ain't much on manners, but I know a man when I see him.”
For an instant Hale gave himself up to the delicious flattery of unexpected, unintended, and apparently uninterested compliment. Becoming at last a little embarrassed under the frank curiosity of the girl's dark eyes, he changed the subject.
“Do you always come up here through the stables?” he asked, glancing round the room, which was evidently her own.
“I reckon,” she answered half abstractedly. “There's a ladder down thar to Maw's room”—pointing to a trapdoor beside the broad chimney that served as a wall—“but it's handier the other way, and nearer the bosses if you want to get away quick.”
This palpable suggestion—borne out by what he remembered of the other domestic details—that the house had been planned with reference to sudden foray or escape reawakened his former uneasy reflections. Zeenie, who had been watching his face, added, “It's no slouch, when b'ar or painters hang round nights and stampede the stock, to be able to swing yourself on to a boss whenever you hear a row going on outside.”
“Do you mean that YOU—”