"Oh, ye think he air a common thief ez be arter the value o' thar truck, like the ignorant folks round hyar!" cried Letitia, repudiating kinship and the community in the pride of her new scientific acquisitions.
"Ye l'arnt that from him, too, I reckon—a-girdin' at yer own home folks!" said Adelaide, reproachfully.
Letitia's face was dyed even a deeper scarlet. "Oh, he be some smarter 'n folks in gineral," she protested, nevertheless. "An' Steve tole ye so, too, I'll be bound."
This allusion struck home.
"Waal, thar's been enough an' too much quar'lin' over him now, Litt," Adelaide said, sadly. "Don't let's ye an' me fall out 'bout'n him. Sing some mo'—yer singin' air powerful clear an' sweet—sing some mo'."
Letitia, only half appeased, shook her head. "My singin' 'pears ter raise harnts, or the devils, or suthin', ter-night. I can't sing no mo' with sech white queer faces ter peek through the window at me."
All her sparkle seemed quenched somehow; the airy wings of her wit were folded and trailing, and she was afoot, as it were, in the dust.
This perception, subtly realized, emboldened Baker Anderson to perpetrate in his turn a small jest at the expense of his late tormentor.
"Oh, ye mought ez well sing," he said, in a humorous, callow growl, and with an awkward wag of his square head. "I reckon ye never see nobody at the winder, 'ceptin' mebbe 'twar Fee Guthrie, 'shamed ter kem a-visitin' ye every night, so he mus' hev a look at ye whilst singin', through the winder—he 'lows ye be so powerful pritty." And he grinned broadly in the pride of this achievement.
For Felix Guthrie had repeatedly made one of the small party, talking chiefly about his obdurate soul, resistant to conversion, much as if it were an obstinate mule, until a late bedtime turned his steps from the door. But Letitia was neither discomfited nor roused by this unprecedented conversational effort on the part of the shy Baker. She only replied, in a dull, spiritless tone, "'Twarn't Fee."