There was something both of cordiality and coquetry in her manner. Her large eyes narrowed as she laughed, and albeit they glittered between their closing lids, the expression was not pleasant. Levity did not become her.
"Yes, ye do," he said seriously. "Ye 'pear ter be real thrivin' an' peart an' healthy."
His look, his words, were charged with no sort of recognition or value of her beauty: clearly her challenge had fallen to the ground unnoticed.
"He'd like me jes' ez well ef I war all pitted up with the smallpox, or ez freckled ez a tur-r-key-aig," she thought, flushing with irritation.
Beauty is jealous of preëminence, and would fain have precedence even of love. She could take no sort of satisfaction in a captive that her bright eyes had not shackled. Somehow this love seemed to flout, to diminish, her attractions. It was like an accident. She could account for his subjection on no other grounds. As she sat silent, grave enough now and very beautiful, gazing askance and troubled upon him, he went on:—
"I war so oneasy an' beset lest suthin' hed happened on the mounting, whilst I war away, ter trouble you-uns or some o' yer folks. I never hed time ter study much 'bout sech in the day, but I dreamt 'bout ye in the night, an' all night,"—he laughed a little,—"all sort'n mixed up things. I got ter be a plumb Joseph fur readin' dreams—only I could read the same one forty diff'rent ways, an' every way made me a leetle mo' oneasy than the t'other one. I s'pose ye hev been perlite enough ter miss me a leetle," he concluded.
She flashed her great eyes at him with a pretended stare of surprise. "My—no!" she exclaimed. "We-uns hev hed the comet ter keep us comp'ny—we ain't missed nobody!"
He laughed a little, as at a repartee, and then went on:—
"Waal, the comic war a-cuttin' a pretty showy figger down yander at Colbury. 'Ston-ishin' how much store folks do 'pear ter set on it! They hed rigged up some sort'n peepin'-glass in the Court-House yard, an' thar war mighty nigh the whole town a-squinchin' up one eye ter examinate the consarn through it—all the court off'cers, 'torney-gin'ral, an' sech, an' old Doctor Kane an' Jedge Peters, besides a whole passel o' ginerality folks. They 'lowed the glass made it 'pear bigger."
"Did it?" she asked, with sudden interest.