"Howdy, Jerry. Where you a-goin?"
"I'm a-lookin' fer our red an' white heifer. She's strayed away some place an' we hain't see hair ner hide of her since yestiddy mornin'."
"I didn't see no signs of a strange caow back yonder. But mebbe she's there. If she is she'll be in the holler by Uncle Jonah Cobb's place, 'cause you kin see all the rest from the ridge. Well, I gotta be a-gittin' on. Git along there, Blackie. It'll be dark afore I git milked. Good-by, Jerry."
"I don't reckon she's in the holler. Anyway it'd be too dark to see her agin I got there. I guess I'll go on back home."
He turned and walked by Judith's side.
They walked along the ridge path together behind the cows. Neither of them spoke a word. Before they reached the Pippinger barnyard, Jerry vaulted a rail fence and went off toward home across fields. Judith looking after him noticed with what agility he leapt the fence and how light and springy was his step as he strode away across the deserted corn fields. Yes, she admitted to herself, he was, as Lizzie May had said, much better looking than Dick Whitmarsh. On the whole she thought she liked him better than Dick.
The next evening he met her in the same place.
"Howdy, Jerry. You still a-searchin' for that red an' white heifer?"
She looked at him with laughing challenge in her dark eyes. Instantly he was put at ease by this frank admission of things as they really were. She had placed him where he wanted to be. He turned and walked beside her.
On the third evening he took her hand in his and they walked along together swinging the joined hands between them like two children. Her restless, work-hardened hand, neither small nor delicate, nestled comfortably in Jerry's large, warm palm. There was something comforting, something restful and satisfying about that firm, enfolding male pressure. Her hand, lying in his, felt relaxed and at peace, like a child rocked by its mother.