"I mean," said Rhodes, confused, "the second Mrs. Guthrie."
"I ain't the fust one, now, sure," she said, her eyes fixed upon him with a sort of pertinacious attention. "An' what's that to you?"
Rhodes made a mighty endeavor to cast off the influences that paralyzed his advances. "You'd never guess, and so I'll tell you. I have heard my grandfather talk about you enough—how he danced with you at a bran dance down on Tomahawk Creek. Remember old Len Rhodes? Young Len, he used to be; but I am young Len now, myself."
Her face changed suddenly, so unexpectedly that one might wonder that it did not creak, so stiff and immobile had the features seemed. There was a new expression in her eye—a sort of glitter of expectancy.
"What did he say, this hyar old young Len Rhodes o' yourn? What did he say 'bout'n me?" She had a cautious air, as if she reserved her opinions.
Rhodes had taken off his hat and was leaning against the post of the porch, although he still stood upon the ground. He burst into sudden laughter that seemed to startle the somnolent dark stillness of the shadows.
"Oh, no, Mrs. Guthrie," he cried, archly. "You don't catch me that way. You'll be saying next thing that because I'm running for the Legislature I'm going round the country trying to get votes by flattering the ladies. I don't know what the t'other Len Rhodes said to you that day at the bran dance on Tomahawk Creek years and years ago, but this Len Rhodes ain't a-goin' to repeat any of his second-hand compliments, not if he knows himself, and he think he do!"
A faint color was in her parchment-like cheek, a yellow gleam in her black eyes; the woman seemed to have grown suddenly young! A moment ago the idea might have been ridiculous, but now it was easy to see that she must have been beautiful—most beautiful. And she was determined to hear the words in which old Len Rhodes—in her day young Len Rhodes, the judge's son, and the richest and most notable man in all the county—had celebrated the fact. Her vanity still burned, albeit embers. How long, how long since fuel had been brought to feed this fire, that nevertheless would die only when her breath might leave her!
"Oh, ye air jes' a-funnin'! Ye can't remember nuthin' yer gran'dad tole 'bout the gals he danced with forty-five year ago. He couldn't tell 'em one from t'other hisself arter twenty year had passed. Gals is mos'ly alike," she added, with a consciousness that Rhodes had knowledge, as far as she herself was concerned, which contradicted this humble assertion. She smiled upon him. "Ye mus' git in the habit o' tellin' a heap o' lies electioneerin'. An' ye feel like ye mought ez well bamboozle one or two old wimmin ez not 'mongst the men. A few lies mo' or less won't make much diff'ence in the long count again ye at the jedgmint-day."
"I'll tell you something that's got the ear-marks of truth—something that Len Rhodes told me about you," declared Rhodes, apparently led on and over-persuaded into loquacity—"something that I couldn't know of myself. Ain't that fair, Shattuck? This is my friend Mr. Shattuck, Mrs. Guthrie. I carry him around to keep the girls from running off with me. The other Len Rhodes had no such trouble when you knew him. I'll be bound the main thing was to keep him from running off with the girls. Ha! ha! ha!"