“Hit’s a lot to offer ary womern, hain’t it?” said she.
“Had ye much to offer in exchange?” said he, quietly and bitterly. “We traded fair, the best we knowed, the same sort of trade that’s common. We got married—thar was our children. What more is thar fer ye er em er ary of us in these hills, I’d like to know! Such as I’ve had, ye’ve had.”
There was something so stern, so bitter, in his sudden unkind remark that she took another tack.
“Hain’t ye tired?” she began, wheedling. She stooped over and pulled back the coverlet, a gaudy, patchwork quilt upon the single bed of the apartment. “Don’t ye want to lay down an’ rest a while?”
“No. I’m a-thinkin’.”
“What was ye thinkin’ about—me?”
“No, I was thinkin’ about the new doctor, an’ what he said to me last week.”
She was silent now. The name of the new doctor seemed to be something she had heard before.
“Ye talk too much with that new doctor. He puts too many fool ideas in yore haid. We’re married, an’ we got to live like that. How do ye figger any different, I’d like to know? Ye brung me here yore own self—ye knowed what ye wanted when ye come up thar courtin’ me at my daddy’s at the haid of Bull Skin. I come right down here to yore house when I was married. I stood right on this floor here, an’ yore daddy, he married us. Ye know that.”
“Yes, I do.” The young man’s face was extremely grave and gray as he spoke.