“Martha!” said the first voice in laughing reproof, “I vow I shall send you away some day!”
And then there was a clumping step on the floor, and Martha’s voice reached the door as she went out of the house through the kitchen:
“I’s goin’ to the bunkhouse to expostulate wif that lazy Bud Hemmingway. He tole me this mawnin’ he’s gwine feed them hawgs—an’ he ain’t done it!”
And then Mrs. Taylor appeared at the door and placed an arm around her husband’s neck, drawing his head over to her and kissing him.
She looked much like the Marion Harlan who had left the Arrow on a night about a month before, though there was a more eloquent light in her eyes, and a tenderness had come over her that made her whole being radiate.
“Don’t you think you had better get ready to go to Dawes, dear?” she suggested.
“I like that better than ‘Squint’ even,” he grinned.
For a long time they stood in the doorway very close together. And then Mrs. Taylor looked up with grave eyes at her husband.
“Won’t you please let me look at all of father’s note to you, Squint?” she asked.
“That can’t be done,” he grinned at her. “For,” he added, “that day after I let you read part of it I burnt it. It’s gone—like a lot of other things that are not needed now!”