All through this speech the old woman tried to interrupt.
'Laws-a-massy, Rick,' she said at length, 'ye hev got mighty tetchy sence ye hev been hid out. I ain't sayin' nuthin' agin you-uns, ez I knows on—nor agin that man that lived on Chilhowee Mounting, nuther. I can't sot myself ter jedge o' him. He war a perfessin' member, an' he hed a powerful gift in 'quirin'; useter raise the chune reg'lar at all the meetin's ez fur back ez I kin remember.'
Her interest in the visit was impaired to some degree by this collision; she would have rejoiced to express her mental estimate of Rick as the 'headin'est critter in the kentry,' but the hospitable instincts constrained her, and she nobly swallowed her vexation. His presence, however, 'hectored' her, and she seized an excuse to absent herself presently, saying that she had to get her clean plaid coat to mend, 'bein' ez when it last hung on the clothes-line that thar fresky young hound named Bose stood on his hind legs ter gnaw it, an' actially chawed a piece out'n it, and I hev ter put a wedge in it afore I kin wear it.'
She creaked away into the next room, and as the door shut he turned his eyes for the first time on Dorinda. The firelight played on the reel, whirling in a lustrous circle before her, on the broche stuck in the rough little shoe, on her arm, uplifted in a graceful curve as she held the thread. Her brilliant eyes were grave and intent; her dense black hair and her dark blue dress heightened the fairness of her face, and the crimson kerchief about her throat was hardly more vivid than the flush on her cheeks.
The knowledge that her embarrassment was greater than his own made him bolder. They sat, however, some time in silence. Then, his heart waxing soft in the coveted domestic atmosphere and the contemplation of the picture before him, he said gently:
'They air all agin me, D'rindy.'
She forgot herself instantly. She looked full at him with soft melancholy deprecation.
'They don't hender ye none,' she said.
'Ye don't sot no store by me nuther, these days, D'rindy,' he went on, with a thrill of elation in his heart belying the doubt and despair in his speech.
The reel ticked and told off another cut. She leaned forward to tie the thread. She could not lift her eyelids now; still he saw the vivid sapphire iris, half eclipsed by the long black lash.