"Ben has been here and gone," she said. "He can't be very far away.
Won't you come in?"
He laughed. "I don't think I'll come in," he returned. "This lover business is new to me, an' I wouldn't want Ben to come back an' ketch me blushin' an' takin' on."
"But he has to know," she insisted, laughing.
"Sure," he said, secure in the darkness, "but you tell him."
"I won't!" she declared positively, stamping a foot.
"Then I reckon he won't get told," he returned quietly.
"Well, then," she said, laughing, "I suppose that is settled."
She came out to the edge of the porch, away from the door, where the stream of light from within could not search them out, and there they took leave of one another, she going back into the cabin and he mounting Mustard and riding away in the darkness.
He was in high spirits, for he had much to be thankful for. As he rode through the darkness, skirting the cottonwood in the flat, he allowed his thoughts to wander. His refusal to enter the cabin had not been a mere whim; he intended on the morrow to seek out Ben and tell him. He had not wanted to tell him with her looking on to make the situation embarrassing for him.
When he thought of how she had fooled him by making it appear that she had led him on for the purpose of getting material for her love story, he was moved to silent mirth. "But I cert'nly didn't see anything funny in it while she was puttin' it on," he told himself, as he rode.