It was no great hardship for Rick. She lightly slipped the skeins over the wrists that had known sterner shackles. The task required her to sit near him; her face and head were bent toward him as she absorbed herself in the effort to find the end of the thread; sometimes she lifted her eyes and looked radiantly at him.
He had not known how beautiful she was—because he saw her face more closely, he thought, not averted, nor coy, as always before—or was it embellished by that ineffable joy that filled her heart? Well for them both, perhaps, that those few moments were so happy—or is it well to remember a supreme felicity, for this is fleeting. Yellow yarn! she was winding threads of gold. How his pulses thrilled at the lightest flying touch of her fleet hands!
He looked at her—into her eyes if he might—at her round crimson cheek, at her clearly cut chin, at the long lashes, at the black hair drawn back from her brow, where a curling tendril drooped over the temple. And he held the yarn all awry.
It was no first-class job, for this reason and her haste.
'What ails ye ter hustle 'long so, D'rindy?' he asked at last. 'Ye ain't so mighty afeared o' yer granny.'
'Naw,' Dorinda admitted; 'but brother Pete, he be at home ter-night, an' he air toler'ble fractious ef he sees his chance, an' I don't want him a-laffin' at we-uns; kase I hev hearn him say ez when young folks gits ter windin' yarn tergether 'tain't fur love o' the spun-truck, but jes' fur one another.'
Rick laughed a little, slowly. Then, growing grave:
'Ef ye'll b'lieve me, Pete told the word yander ter the still ez Amos Jeemes—a mis'able addled aig he be!—'lowed ter the men at the mill ez he b'lieved ez 'twar the Cayces ez rescued me, the day o' the gaynder-pullin', from the sher'ff.'
She paused, the bright thread in her motionless hand, her fire-lit face bent upon him.
'Amos Jeemes hed better be keerful how he tries ter fix it on we-uns!' she cried, with the tense vibration of anger, 'tellin' the mill an' sech! I hev hearn the boys 'low ez 'twar ten year in the pen'tiary fur rescuing a man from the sher'ff, ef it got fund out.'