“She’ll need a good deal of looking after,” he went on. “It won’t do to let her tumble around and take care of herself, as a boy might. We must be tender of her.”
He bent forward and drew the cover cautiously over the red flannel sleeve.
“They think it a good joke, those fellows,” he said; “but it isn’t a joke with us, is it, young woman? We’ve a pretty big job to engineer between us, but I daresay we shall come out all right. We shall be good friends in the end, and that’s a pretty nice thing for a lonely fellow to look forward to.”
Then he arose stealthily and returned to the kitchen.
“I want you to tell me,” he said to Mornin, “what she needs. I suppose she needs something or other.”
“She needs mos’ ev’rything, Mars Tom,” was the answer; “seems like she hain’t bin pervided fer ’t all, no more ’n ef she was a-gwine ter be a youn’ tukky dat de Lord hisself hed fitted out at de start.”
“Well,” said Tom, “I’ll go to Barnesville to-morrow and talk to Judge Rutherford’s wife about it. She’ll know what she ought to have.”
And, after a few moments given to apparently agreeable reflection, he went back to the room he had left.
He had barely seated himself, however, when he was disturbed by a low-sounding tap on the side door, which stood so far open as to allow of any stray evening breeze entering without reaching the corner of the chimney.
“Come in!” said Tom, not in a friendly roar, as usual, but in a discreetly guarded voice.