"And she was quite as much in love with you."
"Was she?... And Cunnel Doolittle! Ain't he splendid? And how he do know hosses! Wouldn't I love to see some of them races that he told about? Wouldn't I love to have a chance to learn how to become a lady like your aunt? She's just the sweetest thing that ever lived."
"And ... and ... Miss Barbara?" said Layson, with a little mischief in his wrinkling eyelids.
The girl shrugged herself together haughtily upon her stump. He had seen lowlands girls use almost the same gesture when, in drawing-rooms, some topic had come up which they did not wish to talk about.
"Huh! Her!" said Madge and would have changed the subject had he let her.
"Really?" he asked, wickedly. "Didn't you like her?"
"I ain't sayin' much," said Madge, "because she's different from me, has had more chance, is better dressed, knows more from books an' so on, an' it might seem like I was plumb jealous of her. Maybe I am, too. But, dellaw! Her with her pollysol! When she opened it that way at me I thought it war a gun an' she war goin' to fire! Maybe I ain't had no learnin' in politeness, but it seems to me I would a been a little more so, just the same, if I'd been in her place. She don't like me, she don't, an' I—why, I just hates her! Her with her ombril up, an' not a cloud in sight!"
Layson looked at her and laughed. The letter in his pocket made it seem probable that she would not need, in future, to submit to such humiliations as the bluegrass girl had put upon her, so his merriment could not be counted cruel.
"Jealous of her?" he inquired, quizzically.
She sat in deep thought for a moment and then frankly said: "I reckon so; a leetle, teeny mite. Maybe it has made me mean in thinkin' of her, ever since."