"Lord, Louisianny!" adding, cheerfully, "How ye've serprised me!"
Then he took in afresh the change in her dress. There was a pile of stove-wood stacked on the porch to be ready for use, and he sat down on it to look at her.
"Why, ye've got a new dress on!" he said. "Thet thar's what made ye look sorter curis. I hardly knowed ye."
Then he remembered what she had said on first seeing him.
"Why don't ye want me to go in the house?" he asked. "What sort o' folks air they?"
"They came with me from the Springs," she answered; "and—and I want to—to play a joke on them."
She put her hands up to her burning cheeks, and stood so.
"A joke on 'em?" he repeated.
"Yes," she said, speaking very fast. "They don't know I live here, they think I came from some city,—they took the notion themselves,—and I want to let them think so until we go away from the house. It will be such a good joke."
She tried to laugh, but broke off in the middle of a harsh sound. Her father, with one copperas-colored leg crossed over the other, was chewing his tobacco slowly, after the manner of a ruminating animal, while he watched her.