“Tie a tag around his neck?”
“No, suh.”
“Well, you just keep yo' hogs inside yo' lot. Too many loose hogs runnin' 'round. Case is dismissed and co't is adjourned for the day,” which, while very poor law, was good common-sense, stray hogs on the public highway having become a nuisance.
With these kindly examples before her, Kate soon fell into the ways of the house. If she did not wish to get up she lay abed and Peggy brought her breakfast with her own hands. If, when she did leave her bed, she went about in pussy-slippers and a loose gown of lace and frills without her stays, Peggy's only protest was against her wearing anything else—so adorable was she. When this happy, dreamy indolence began to pall upon her—and she could not stand it for long—she would be up at sunrise helping Peggy wash and dress her frolicsome children or get them off to school, and this done, would assist in the housework—even rolling the pastry with her own delicate palms, or sitting beside the bubbling, spontaneous woman, needle in hand, aiding with the family mending—while Peggy, glad of the companionship, would sit with ears open, her mind alert, probing—probing—trying to read the heart of the girl whom she loved the better every day. And so there had crept into Kate's heart a new peace that was as fresh sap to a dying plant, bringing the blossoms to her cheeks and the spring of wind-blown branches to her step.
Then one fine morning, to the astonishment of every one, and greatly to Todd's disgust, no less a person than Mr. Langdon Willits of “Oak Hill” (distant three miles away) dismounted at Coston's front porch, and throwing the reins to the waiting darky, stretched his convalescent, but still shaky, legs in the direction of the living-room, there to await the arrival of “Miss Seymour of Kennedy Square,” who, so he informed Todd, “expected him.”
Todd scraped a foot respectfully in answer, touched his cocoanut of a head with his monkey claw of a finger, waited until the broad back of the red-headed gentleman had been swallowed up by the open door, and then indulged in this soliloquy:
“Funny de way dem bullets hab o' missin' folks. Des a leetle furder down an' dere wouldn't 'a' been none o' dis yere foolishness. Pity Marse Harry hadn't practised some mo'. Ef he had ter do it ag'in I reckon he'd pink him so he neber be cavortin' 'roun' like he is now.”
Willits's sudden appearance filled St. George with ill-concealed anxiety. He did not believe in this parade of invalidism, nor did he like Kate's encouraging smile when she met him—and there was no question that she did smile—and, more portentous still, that she enjoyed it. Other things, too, she grew to enjoy, especially the long rides in the woods and over to the broad water. For Willits's health after a few days of the sunshine of Kate's companionship had undergone so renovating a process that the sorrel horse now arrived at the porch almost every day, whereupon Kate's Joan would be led out, and the smiled-upon gentleman in English riding-boots and brown velvet jacket and our gracious lady in Lincoln green habit with wide hat and sweeping plume would mount their steeds and be lost among the pines.
Indeed, to be exact, half of Kate's time was now spent in the saddle, Willits riding beside her. And with each day's outing a new and, to St. George, a more disturbing intimacy appeared to be growing between them. Now it was Willits's sister who had to be considered and especially invited to Wesley—a thin wisp of a woman with tortoise-shell sidecombs and bunches of dry curls, who always dressed in shiny black silk and whose only ornament was her mother's hair set in a breastpin; or it was his father by whom she must sit when he came over in his gig—a bluff, hearty man who generally wore a red waistcoat with big bone buttons and high boots with tassels in front.
This last confidential relation, when the manners and bearing of the elder man came under his notice, seemed to St. George the most unaccountable of all. Departures from the established code always jarred upon him, and the gentleman in the red waistcoat and tasselled boots often wandered so far afield that he invariably set St. George's teeth on edge. Although he had never met Kate before, he called her by her first name after the first ten minutes of their acquaintance—his son, he explained, having done nothing but sound her praises for the past two years, an excuse which carried no weight in gentleman George's mind because of its additional familiarity. He had never dared, he knew, to extend that familiarity to Peggy—it had always been “Mrs. Coston” to her and it had always been “Mr. Coston” to Tom, and it was now “your Honor” or “judge” to the dispenser of justice. For though the owner of Oak Hill lived within a few miles of the tumble-down remnant that sheltered the Costons; and though he had fifty servants to their one, or half a one—and broad acres in proportion, to say nothing of flocks and herds—St. George had always been aware that he seldom crossed their porch steps or they his. That little affair of some fifty or more years ago was still remembered, and the children of people who did that sort of thing must, of course, pay the penalty. Even Peggy never failed to draw the line. “Very nice people, my dear,” he had heard her say to Kate one day when the subject of the younger man's family had come up. “Mr. Willits senior is a fine, open-hearted man, and does a great deal of good in the county with his money—quite a politician, and they do say has a fair chance of some time being governor of the State. But very few of us about here would want to marry into the family, all the same. Oh no, my dear Kate, of course there was nothing against his grandmother. She was a very nice woman, I believe, and I've often heard my own mother speak of her. Her father came from Albemarle Sound, if I am right, and was old John Willits's overseer. The girl was his daughter.”