Her literal interpretation embarrassed and threw him off his guard.
"Never till now," he said. He was not intentionally flirting with Zack Pettingill's daughter; but elsewhere and to another of her sex the speech would have impressed him as a pretty compliment. In her quality of woman, in her possession of a heart, she was no more represented in his mind than if she had been the flower above her.
She either did not comprehend the flattery or she ignored it. Her mind seemed fixed upon the water-nymph and the oread. "Bound ter the spot!" she reiterated, with a sceptical air. "Thar's a heap o' ways o' bein' bound ter the spot. Laziness kin hinder ez totally ez a block an' chain. Mebbe they war 'flicted that-a-way, sorter like me." She stretched both arms upward in an attitude that might have been grotesque in another, but with her was a charming and childish expression of fatigue.
He sat down on the ledge of the rock, took out his watch, and looked at it. "I wish I knew whether the doctor wouldn't come or would," he said, the harassment of the earlier hours recurring to his mind. "I am sorry they ever sent for him. Doesn't he seem a long time coming?"
"Fee Guthrie axed me that question fourteen hundred an' fifty times this mornin'. I don't set my mind on doctor men whenst folks air well, only whenst ailin'. 'Pears ter me like Mr. Rhodes's main complaint air foolishness."
Shattuck flushed with a sort of loyal resentment for his friend's sake. "You think he is foolish because he wanted to dance with you?" he said, tartly.
She cast a rallying side glance down upon him. "Mr. Rhodes warn't particular 'bout dancin' with me," she protested. "I ain't in no wise a favorite 'mongst the boys. That's what makes me 'low I be so smart!" She turned her head with a bird-like coquetry, more formidable for being so natural.
"Too smart for them?" he said, placated in spite of himself by her naïve arrogations.
She nodded the wise little head that she so boldly vaunted. "They all ax me, 'Hey? hey?'"—she raucously thickened her voice in drawling mimicry—"ter every word I say—every one I ever see but you-uns."
If he could compliment, she could return the courtesy. He was silent for a moment, remembering the criticisms that he had heard last night on her unexpected and contrariwise conversation. She was doubtless far too clever for her compeers and her sphere—even clever enough to know it.