Jeff was singularly silent while Judith was crying up her wares. He stood moodily aside, looking on but never offering to purchase shaving cream or other masculine requirements. He wished she had not come. He resented her placing herself in a position for all of these wretched persons to patronize her. He hated the look on Tom Harbison’s face as he edged 120 closer and closer to the girl, insisting upon putting down his name for one of every article offered for sale.
Judith, however, was so bent on being a salesman that she was absolutely unaware of the admiration she had evidently created in the eyes of young Harbison. When she went to her car to get the wares stored in the back it was Harbison who sprang forward to assist her. Jeff watched the couple as they went down the walk to the yard gate and a suppressed fury gripped him when he noticed that Tom was much closer to Judith than was necessary. He knew perfectly well that Tom Harbison always walked too close to any girl, and had a habit of leaning over any member of the fair sex with a protecting air, occasionally touching her elbow as though to assist her over anything, even so small as a pebble, that might be in her way. When they reached the yard gate one might have supposed a dragon threatened the ladye faire, so solicitous was his manner, so brave his bearing.
Jeff could stand it no longer. He ran down the steps and with long strides arrived in time to assist the supposedly helpless maiden.
“I want to help you,” he said shortly.
“That’s very kind, but really the things are 121 not heavy,” and Judith began busily picking out the articles from the back of her car and putting them in a basket.
But Jeff had come to help, and help he would. He assumed a cousinly air that put Tom Harbison’s courtliness entirely in the shade. If any protecting was to be done he, Jeff Bucknor, was going to do it. He was the proper person to carry the basket of toilet articles as heir apparent to Buck Hill and an avowed kinsman of the lady. He even managed to crowd Harbison from the walk as, with basket in one hand, he protected the astonished Judith with the other. When the back-door customers were visited, the young master insisted upon accompanying Judith, and there he stood guard while she talked concerning the virtues of her anti-kink lotion and scented soaps.
She wished he would leave her for a moment, as she had a little private business to transact with Uncle Billy, but he stuck closer than any brother was ever known to stick and she must let him see her hand to the old man a package, saying:
“Please, Uncle Billy, give this to Miss Ann Peyton and tell her it is from a sincere admirer. It is just a bottle of lavender water, but I thought she might like it.” 122
Uncle Billy bowed so low that his beard almost touched the ground.
“Thank you, thank you, missy! I been a sayin’ that you air the onlies’ one in the whole county what kin hol a can’le to what my Miss Ann wa’ in ol’ days—an’ air now fer that matter.”