"Do you think you would be scared?" he asked, ready to reassure the delicate feminine sensibility.
"Skeered o' whut?" she demanded wonderingly.
If she could not instinctively prefigure shrinking from the crowds, from the strange situation, he determined that he would not suggest the poignant anguish of stage fright, and the thought occurred to him for the first time that this was a product of civilisation, the evil of self-consciousness, the prescience of carping criticism or ridicule. He made haste to say that the tent of Isaac, the snake-tamer, where he was wont to "eat 'em alive" was at the other end of the Square from the tent wherein she would sing and dance. True, the "Wild Man" was a close neighbour, but since she was to be in effect for a time a member of the company he would disclose in confidence the circumstance that Wick-Zoo, the Wild Man, was getting to be quite civilised, in fact—in fact—he burst out laughing,—Wick-Zoo was a pretty good fellow. She need have no fear of Wick-Zoo, the Wild Man.
Then he piped up with a very pretty tenor and sang the air which he had caught from hearing it in the orchard, and gave her some points as to the management of her voice to make more of it for the public behoof.
And while the old grandmother listened sharp-eyed and spellbound, the girl, proving docile and tractable, sought to apply his admonitions and criticism, and now and again his dulcet tenor tones rang out to illustrate some axiom. The group of mountain men lingered for a time, but presently drifted out to the rain-drenched porch, where drops still trickled from the eaves. The storm was over; as they gazed out down the valley they saw that it had become all of a luminous emerald green with vast clouds of pearl white vapours shimmering and glistening as the sun smote upon them, floating between the purple mountains near at hand and half veiling the distant azure ranges. A sudden rainbow sprung into the light, spanning the abysses from Chilhowee to the Great Smoky heights, and further down the valley, like a faint reflection of its glories, a duplicate arch was set in the mists beyond. With stolid unperceptive eyes they mechanically dwelt upon the scene—it was to them but the ordinary aspect of life. They appreciated naught of its splendours, its vastness, its pictorial values, its uplifting subtlety of suggestion. It meant to them that the rain was over and that sunset would soon emblazon the west. Cows were to be milked, the stock to be fed, the wood to be cut, and perhaps other duties pressed upon their recollection, for Tom presently said in a low voice to his father, "Granny mighty nigh let the cat out'n the bag."
Shadrach Pinnott warily nodded his head in assent.
Another of his sons spoke up after cautiously listening to be sure that the newcomer could hear naught but his own carolling, "'My Kate has many come to sue!'"
"Ef he hed been what Clotildy took him fur the whole secret would hev been out fur true."
The bare suggestion that this danger might have so nearly menaced them put the whole group out of countenance.
"Ye 'low ez ye be sure, dad, ez he air nuthin' but a showman like he say?" asked Daniel, the eldest of Shadrach's sons, a slow, sedate-looking man of thirty years. "Ye 'low he didn't sense nuthin' o' the facts from them words that Granny let fall?"