Had not Taylor been so eager to make his case strong, he might have noted the exceedingly light sarcasm of her voice.
“It hurts a heap, ma’am,” he declared. “Why, last night——”
“I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to lie about an ankle,” she said, coldly.
Taylor’s face went crimson, and in his astonishment he stepped heavily upon the traitor foot and stood, convicted, before her, looking very much like a reproved schoolboy.
She rose from her chair, and now she turned from Taylor and stood looking out over the big level, while behind her Taylor shifted his feet, scowled and felt decidedly uncomfortable.
From where Taylor watched her she looked very rigid and indignant—with her head proudly erect and her shoulders squared; and he could almost feel that her eyes were flashing with resentment.
Yet had he been able to see her face, he would have seen her lips twitching and her eyes dancing with a light that might have puzzled him. For she had already forgiven him.
“There’s lies—and lies,” he offered palliatively, breaking a painful silence.
There was no answer, and Taylor, desperately in earnest in his desire for forgiveness, and looking decidedly funny to Bud Hemmingway, who was watching from the interior of the room beyond the open door, walked across the porch with no suspicion of a limp, and halted near the girl.
“Shucks, Miss Harlan,” he said. “I’m sure caught; and I’m admitting it was a sort of mean trick to pull off on you. But if you wanted to be near a girl you’d taken a shine to—that you liked a whole lot, I mean, Miss Harlan—and you couldn’t think of any good excuse to be around her? You couldn’t blame a man for that—could you? Besides,” he added, when peering at the side of her face, he saw the twitching lips, ready to break into a smile, “I’ll make it up to you!”