Winthrop looked at him from under his tilted hat—he had tilted it forward over his eyes. "I should think it would make you sick to ask her," he said—"sick with shame!"
"It isn't the least shameful, it's the right thing to do," responded Lanse. "But which side are you on, Ev? You seem to be all over the field."
"Never mind which side I'm on. You can't take her up and drop her in that way."
"You've got it mixed. I dropped her eight years ago; now I'm taking her up again. And if she is as I think she is, she will be glad to come."
"Oh!" said Winthrop, with angry scorn.
"She'll be glad, because she's my wife—she's a stickler for that sort of thing. She is a very good woman; that's the advantage of having a really good woman for your wife—you can rely upon her whether she likes you or not—likes you very much, I mean. But I begin to think you don't know her as well as I do, in spite of the time you have had."
"Know her? I don't know her in the least! I have never known her—I see that now."
At this moment they heard the dip of an oar, and stopped. Coming down the narrow stream behind them, appeared a rude craft manned by a very black boy and a very white baby. The boat was a long, rough dug-out, and the boy was paddling; his passenger, a plump child of about three, had the bleached skin of the Florida cracker, and flaxen hair of the palest straw-color. An immense calico sun-bonnet lay across its knee, and, after a slow stare with twisted neck at the two strangers, it lifted and put on this penthouse; to put it on was probably its idea of "manners." The penthouse, in fact, represented the principal part of its attire, there was nothing else but a little red petticoat.
But if the passenger was dignified, the oarsman was not; delighted to see anybody, the little darky had showed his white teeth in a perpetual grin from the moment the canoe had appeared in sight.
Lanse always noticed children. "Where have you been, Epaminondas?" he said, with pretended severity. "What are you doing here?"