Silas followed him out. “You didn’t bed them horses down did you?” he asked.
“No. I expect we’d better do it now and have it out of the way.”
As they entered the dark stable and felt their way along the back of the little alley, behind the stalls, for the pitchforks, the younger man asked indifferently:
“Who did you say the young lady was?”
“Oh, ho!” shouted Silas; “it didn’t take you long. I knew you’d be courtin’ of me along with your questions. Now look here, John Hunter, you can’t go an’ carry this schoolma’am off till this here term’s finished. I look fur Carter an’ that new director over to-night, for a school meetin’, an’ I’m blamed if I’m goin’ t’ have you cuttin’ into our plans—no, sirr-ee—she’s t’ be left free t’ finish up this school, anyhow, if I help ’er get it.”
“No danger! You get her the school; but how does she come to have that air away out here? Does she come from some town near here?”
“Town nothin’! She was jest raised on these prairies, same as th’ rest of us. Ain’t she a dandy! No, sir—’er father’s a farmer—’bout as common as any of us, an’ she ain’t had no different raisin’. She’s different in ’erself somehow. Curious thing how one body’ll have a thing an’ another won’t, an’ can’t seem t’ get it, even when he wants it an’ tries. Now you couldn’t make nothin’ but jest plain farmer out of me, no matter what you done t’ me.”
“Do you think they’ll give her the school?” John asked.
Silas’s laugh made the young man uncomfortable. He had intended to avoid the necessity for it, but had forgotten himself.
“There’s Carter now,” was all the reply the old man gave as he moved toward the door, which he could dimly see now that he had been in the darkness long enough for his eyes to become accustomed to it. The splashing footsteps of a horse and the voice of a man cautioning it came from toward the road.