“I 'lowed I'd find ye hyar a-milkin' 'bout now.”
The homely allusion reassured the younger woman.
“I hev ter begin toler'ble early,” she said. “Spot gins 'bout a gallon a milkin' now.”
Spot's calf, which subsisted on what was left over, seemed to find it cruel that delay should be added to his hardships, and he lifted up his voice in a plaintive remonstrance. This reminded Mrs. Todd of his existence; she turned and let down the bars that served to exclude him.
The stranger was staring at her very hard. Somehow she quailed under that look. Though it was fixed upon her in unvarying intensity, it had a strange impersonality. This woman was not seeing her, despite that wide, wistful, yearning gaze; she was thinking of something else, seeing some one else.
And suddenly Luke Todd's wife began to stare at the visitor very hard, and to think of something that was not before her.
“I be the ranger's wife,” said Eugenia. “I kem over hyar ter tell ye he never tuk yer black mare nowise but honest, bein' the ranger.”
She found it difficult to say more. Under that speculative, unseeing look she too faltered.
“They tell me ez Luke Todd air powerful outed 'bout'n it. An' I 'lowed ef he knowed from me ez 'twar tuk fair, he'd b'lieve me.”
She hesitated. Her courage was flagging; her hope had fled. The eyes of the man's wife burned upon her face.