XII
THE IRON IN THE FORGE FIRE
He was bending over the sunken barrel. A shadow, not his own, blurred the water mirror. He looked up quickly.
"Nan!" he cried.
She was standing on the opposite side of the barrel basin, looking down on him with good-natured mockery in the dark eyes.
"I 'lowed maybe you wouldn't have such a back load of religion after you'd been off to the school a spell," she said pointedly. And then: "Does it always make you right dry an' thirsty to say your prayers, Tommy-Jeffy?"
Tom sat back on his heels and regarded her thoughtfully. His first impulse was out of the natural heart, rageful, wounded vanity spurring it on. It was like her heathenish impertinence to look on at such a time, and then to taunt him about it afterward.
But slowly as he looked a curious change came over him. She was the same Nan Bryerson, bareheaded, barelegged, with the same tousled mat of dark hair, and the same childish indifference to a whole frock. And yet she was not the same. The subtle difference, whatever it was, made him get up and offer to shake hands with her,—and he thought it was the newly-made vows constraining him, and took credit therefor.
"You can revile me as much as you like now, Nan," he said, with prideful humility. "You can't make me mad any more, like you used to."
"Why can't I?" she demanded.