“I mean it,” he says, and jerked his haid to one side.
Wal, y’ know, Mace got her temper offen him, and never handed it back. So all durin’ the social, they had it–up and down. I couldn’t ketch all what they said–only little bits, now and then. “Cheek,” I heard the boss say oncet, and Mace come back with somethin’ about not bein’ “a baby.”
Afterwards, when the ole man was out gittin’ the team, she come over t’ me, lookin’ awful appealin’. “Alec,” she says, like she expected I’d shore sympathise with her, “did you hear what paw said? Wasn’t it mean of him?”
I looked down at my boots. Then, I looked straight at her. “Mace,” I says, “he’s right. Mebbe you’ll git mad at me, too, fer sayin’ it. But that Simpson’s tryin’ t’ cut me out–and so he’s givin’ you all this taffy about your voice.”
“Taffy!” she says, fallin’ back a step. “Then you didn’t like my singin’.”
“Why, yas, I did,” I answers, follerin’ along after her. “I thought it was fine.”
But she only shook her haid–like she was hurt–and clumb into the buckboard.
I worried a good deal that night. The more I turned over what Simpson ’d said, the more I wondered if I knowed all they was to his game. What was he drivin’ at with that “celebrated” business? Then, too, it wouldn’t do Mace no good t’ be puffed up so much. She’d been ’lected the prettiest gal. Now she’d been tole she had a way-up voice. ’Fore long, she’d git the big haid.
“Wal, I’ll put a quietus on it,” I says. And, next mornin’, when I seen her, I opened up like this: “Honey, I reckon we’ve waited just about long enough. So we git married Sunday week.”
“That’s too soon,” she answers. “We got t’ git paw on our side. And I ain’t got no new clothes.”