"I should like ter know where he'd find her," observed Shattuck.
Yates turned to bend the eye of astonished and questioning criticism upon the unconscious object of their scrutiny.
"Ye 'low ez Litt Pettingill air well-favored, stranger?" he demanded at last, in amazement.
"Very pretty and very odd. I never saw a face in the least like hers."
"Waal!" exclaimed Yates. "Litt Pettingill's beauty air news ter the mountings. Some folks 'low she hev got a cur'us kind o' mind. Some even say she air teched in the head." His tone seemed to intimate that Mr. Shattuck, in the face of this fact, had reason to reform his standard of taste.
That gentleman shook his own head in contemptuous negation. "Never in this world. Never with that face."
"Waal, ye can't size her up now," insisted Yates, "leetle ez she be"—with a grin—"whilst she be a-standin' still. Ef ye war ter see her a-movin' an' a-turnin' roun', she's ez quick an' keen-lookin' ez a knife-blade in a suddint fight, an' mighty nigh ez dangerous. She looks at ye like she warn't lookin' at ye, but plumb through yer skull inter yer brains, ter make sure ye war tellin' her what ye thunk. She talks cur'ous, too, sorter onexpected an' contrariwise, an' she never could git religion. That's mighty cur'ous in gal folks. I ain't so mighty partic'lar 'bout men Christians, though I'm a perfesser myself, but religion 'pears ter me ter kem sorter nat'ral ter gal folks. 'Tain't 'kase she's too religious that she ain't a-dancin'. It's jes' 'kase nobody hev asked her. She ain't no sorter favorite 'mongst the boys."
Mr. Shattuck suddenly glanced up, half laughing, half triumphant, for the little figure in blue had just been led out to the centre of the floor, and the doorway was vacant save for a large brindled cur that stood upon the threshold, wagging his tail and watching the scene with a suave, indulgent, presidial gaze, as if he were the patron of the ball. To be sure, her partner was that man of facile admiration, the candidate Rhodes, but Shattuck experienced a vicarious satisfaction that it could not be said that she had not been asked to dance at all.
He watched the couple as the set formed anew, and noticed that Rhodes, with his sedulously rustic air, was beginning in the interim some conversation, stooping from his superior height for her reply. He rose suddenly to the perpendicular, an almost startled surprise upon his face as he stared; then he clapped his hands with a jocular air of applause, and his round laugh rang out with an elastic, unforced merriment, which suggested to his friend that he was finding the ways of policy not such thorny ways after all. Shattuck wondered vaguely if this demonstration, too, were of the affectations of propitiation, or if what she had said were clever enough to elicit it, or merely funny. His eyes followed the little blue-clad figure as she began to dance—her untutored movements all in rhythm with the music, as an azalea dances in time to the wind. Now she drifted about with short, mincing, hesitant steps, now with flying feet and skirts whirling, as if responsive to the circling impetus she could in no wise resist. She looked almost a child amongst the burlier and coarser forms. With her delicate hands, and her tiny feet, and her spirited face, and the faint blue color of her dress, she bore an odd contrast to the buxom beauty of the other mountain girls, clad in variegated plaided homespun. Her blue eyes were alight and glancing; her parted lips were red; her feet hardly seemed to touch the floor as her hands fell from one partner's grasp, and she came wafting through the party-colored maze, with outstretched arms, to another.
For the fun was waxing fast and furious with the added and unique diversion known as "Dancin' Tucker." The forlorn "Tucker" himself, partnerless in the centre of the set, capered solemnly up and down, adjusting his muscles and his pride to ridicule, which was amply attested by the guffaws that ever and anon broke from the spectators. However nonchalantly each temporary "Tucker" might deport himself in his isolated position, the earnestness of his desire to escape from his unwelcome conspicuousness by securing a partner, and his sincere objection to his plight, were manifested always upon the fiddler's command, "Gen'lemen ter the right," when he might join the others on their round, dogging the steps of the youth he wished to forestall, both balancing to each lady in succession. If, by chance, the "Tucker" succeeded first in catching a damsel's hands and swinging her around at the moment that the magic command "Promenade all!" sounded on the air, he left his pillory to the slower swain, who must needs forthwith "dance Tucker."