She nodded slowly. "I think you said something like that once before. I begin to see where you were right."
He made no reply. Why did she want to talk about such things? He hoped she wouldn't bring in Claybrook and her relations with him. He did not feel in the mood for raking over ashes.
"Has Miss Susie been in bed?" He carefully headed on another tack.
"Oh, up and down. She's always that way. You cannot imagine how surprised I was to see you with that road gang. I was riding along with Zeke, all wrapped up in my thoughts, and suddenly I looked up and saw you there——" She trailed off and sat thinking.
Again he was uneasy. Apparently the uncomfortable topic was not entirely buried yet. It might rise up exhumed, in its shroud, any moment.
"Yes," he said. "I'm used to that sort of thing—managin' niggers. Had 'em doin' most every sort of rough work in my time, diggin' ditches, mendin' roads, cuttin' fence posts—all that sort of thing. Guess it's about all I'm fit for." The effort died lugubriously and he sat, waiting. He hated personal confidences and there hung a most particularly uncomfortable one in the offing.
The silence was like a living thing. It crushed down upon the summerhouse with huge, downy black wings. A very faint rustling started up in the dry leaves of the creeper on the roof and clammy little draughts of air came twisting through the cracks. All the languorous glamour of the night had passed. It was merely autumn moonlight, and too late in the year to be sitting out in a summerhouse mouthing inconsequentialities—two people who were old enough to know better. Joe stirred restlessly. Surely she must be convinced that he meant to be friendly. He leaned back and looked up at the sky.
"What do you mean to do, Joe?" Mary Louise began again.
"Huh?" He recovered with a start. "Oh, I don't know. Think sometimes I will come back and try my hand at farmin'. Think maybe I'll be more of a real person doing that than anything else I know. But this road business is a necessary thing. Bloomfield needs a good road—all the way into the city. Something to put her on the map. Maybe with a good road we can get somewhere." Speaking out the idea seemed to crystallize it. He began to enthuse a little over it inwardly. "Mightn't be so bad. Might buy back the old place even, some day. Jenkins is not makin' too much speed with it, I hear."
Mary Louise leaned forward toward him.