"Why, of course I do," he answered after a pause.
She sighed and nestled against him, while his hand which had been on her shoulder, slipped to her waist. Her heart had turned to lead in her breast, and, like Judy, she could have wept because the reality of love was different from her virgin dreams.
CHAPTER III
ABEL HEARS GOSSIP AND SEES A VISION
Two nights before the wedding a corn shucking was held in the barn at Bottom's Ordinary—a usually successful form of entertainment, by which the strenuous labours of a score of able-bodied men were secured at the cost of a keg of cider and a kettle of squirrel stew. In the centre of the barn, which was dimly lighted by a row of smoky, strong-smelling kerosene-oil lanterns, suspended on pegs from the wall, there was a huge wooden bin, into which the golden ears were tossed, as they were stripped of the husks, by a circle of guests, ranging in years from old Adam at the head to the youngest son of Tim Mallory, an inquisitive urchin of nine, who made himself useful by passing the diminishing pitcher of cider. It was a frosty night, and the faces of the huskers showed very red above the knitted woollen comforters which wrapped their throats. Before each man there was a small pile of corn, still in the blade, and this was replenished when it began to dwindle by a band of workers in the moonlight beyond the open windows. In his effort to keep warm somebody had started a hymn, which was vigorously accompanied by a beating of numbed feet on the scattered husks on the floor. Above the volume of sound old Adam's quavering falsetto could be heard piping on like a cracked and discordant flute.
"O-ver thar, O-ver thar,
Th-ar's a la-nd of pure de-light.
O-ver th-ar,
We will la-y our bur-den do-wn.
An' re-ceive our gol-den cro-wn.
In that la-nd of pure de-light
O-ver th-ar."
"That's a cold hymn, an' unsuitable to the weather," remarked Tim Mallory at the end of the verse. "If you ask me, I'd say thar was mo' immediate comfort in singin' about the redness of hell-fire, an' how mortal close we're comin' to it."
"We don't want no impiousness at this here shuckin', Tim," observed William Ming, who occupied the position of host in Betsey's absence about the more important matter of supper. "You fill up with cider an' go at that thar pile befo' you."
"Then pass it on," replied Mallory, reaching for the jug of cider, which travelled in a regular orbit from old Adam's right hand round the circle to the neighbour on his left, who chanced to be Solomon Hatch.
"Speakin' of impiousness," remarked that sour-faced little man, "have you all heard the tales about Reuben Merryweather's gal sence she's had her windfall? Why, to see the way she trails her skirt, you'd think she was the real child of her father." Then rushing hurriedly to generalization at Abel's entrance, he added in a louder tone—"Ah, it's a sad pass for things to come to, an' the beginnin' of the end of public morality, when a gal that's born of a mischance can come to act as if a man was responsible for her. It ain't nothin' mo' nor less than flyin' in the face of the law, which reads different, an' if it keeps up, the women folks will be settin' up the same rights as men to all the instincts of natur'."