The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands and forearms—leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and upper arm in charming contrast—and looked gravely past the admiring figures that nearly touched her own. “It was somewhar over thar,” she said lazily, pointing up the road in the opposite direction to the barn, “but I ain't sure it WAS any one.”
“Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?” said the deputy.
“I reckon—if it WAS him,” returned Sue.
“He must have got on,” said the deputy; “but then he runs like a deer; it's his trade.”
“Wot trade?”
“Acrobat.”
“Wot's that?”
The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity. “A man who runs, jumps, climbs—and all that sort, in the circus.”
“But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?” she continued with adorable naivete.
The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle. “We're bound to come up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and this house it's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his hole without your spottin' him a mile off! Good-by!” The words were addressed to Ira, but the parting glance was directed to the pretty wife as the two men galloped away.