"I'm awful sorry!" he stammered. "If you can't make out to forgive me, I'm going to have a miser'ble time of it after I get home. God will whip me worse for this than He did for the other."
It was here, again, that she gave him the feeling that she was older than he.
"It will serve you quite right. Now you'd better get me home as quick as ever you can. I expect I'll be sick again, after this."
He held his peace and walked her as fast as he could across the fields and out on the pike. But at the Dabney gates he paused. It was not in human courage to face the Major under existing conditions.
"I reckon you'll go and tell your gran'paw on me," he said hopelessly.
She turned on him with anger ablaze.
"Why should I not tell him? And I never want to see you or hear of you again, you cruel, hateful boy!"
Thomas Jefferson hung about the gate while she went stumbling up the driveway, leaning heavily on the great dog. When she had safely reached the house he went slowly homeward, wading in trouble even as he waded in the white dust of the pike. For when one drinks too deeply of the cup of tyranny the lees are apt to be like the little book the Revelator ate—sweet as honey in the mouth and bitter in the belly.
That evening at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put by his father.
"Yes; the Major sent for me again this afternoon. That child is back in bed again with a high fever. It seems she was out playing with that great dog of hers and fell into the creek. I wanted to tell the Major he is just tempting Providence, the way he makes over her and indulges her, but I didn't dare to."