She looked at him in silent acquiescence.
“Then I am happy to make an acquaintance which kind fortune has been holding in store for me, for my stay in the Cove is at the miller’s hospitable home.” He concluded with a smiling flourish. But her bewitching eyes gazed seriously at him.
“What be yer name?” she demanded succinctly.
“Leonard,—John Leonard,—very much at your service,” he replied, with an air half banter, half propitiation.
“Ye be the juggler that mam’s been talkin’ ’bout,” she said as if to herself, completing his identification. “I drawed the idee from what mam said ez ye war a old pusson—at least cornsider’ble on in years.”
“And so I am!” he cried, with a sudden change of tone. “If life is measured by what we feel and what we suffer, I am old,”—he paused with a sense of self-betrayal,—“some four or five hundred at least,” he added, relapsing into his wonted light tone.
She shook her head sagely. “’Pears like ter me ez it mought be medjured by the sense folks gather ez they go. I hev knowed some mighty young fools at sixty.”
The color showed in his face; her unconscious intimation of his youth according to this method of estimate touched his vanity, even evoked a slight resentment.
“You are an ancient dame, on that theory! I bow to your wisdom, madam,—quite the soberest party I have seen since I entered the paradisaical seclusion of Etowah Cove.”
She appreciated the belligerent note in his voice, although she scarcely apprehended the casus belli. There was, however, a responsive flash in her eye, which showed she was game in any quarrel. No tender solicitude animated her lest unintentionally she had wounded the feelings of this pilgrim and stranger. He had taken the liberty to be offended when no offense was intended, and perhaps with the laudable desire to give him, as it were, something to cry for, she struck back as best she might.