The color flared in her face, but she still rocked to and fro, and with her casual indolent gesture hackled the flax. "Mus' be so pleasant 'long o' Mis' Guthrie," she said.
She had adopted as response the first suggestion that came, only to escape from the confusion that beset her; but as a painful flush dyed his face, she rocked a trifle less buoyantly back and forth, and looked keenly though covertly at him, when he rejoined, quietly:
"I be powerful mistaken in you-uns ef ye would gredge a shelter ter a 'oman ez be old, an' frien'less, an' pore, an' not kind, an' hev earned nuthin' but hate in a long life—ye, young, an' pritty, an' good, an' respected by all!"
She paused in her rocking. She looked steadily, motionlessly at him. "Would ye turn her out ef I did?" she asked, in a tone of stipulation.
He hesitated; then, "Naw, by God, I wouldn't!" he declared.
There was a momentary silence. A smile crept to the delicate curves of her lips and vivified with its light the sapphire of her eyes. "Fee Guthrie," she exclaimed, "I never looked ter have cause ter think so well o' ye!"
He gazed at her a trifle bewildered. "An' ye will marry me? Litt, ye know how much I think o' ye; 'pears like I can't tell how much I love ye."
She had thrown herself into her former nonchalant attitude, and was swaying back and forth in the rocking-chair, and gayly hackling the flax. She shook her head, smiling at him.
In his heartache, the pang of disappointment, the demolition of all his cherished hopes—and how strong they had been, albeit he had accounted them slight, had named them despair! with what throes they died!—he felt as some drowning wretch that sees a swift, unheeding bark sail past his agony.
"Account of her?" he gasped.