"Some people will do anything. Never bother with poor trash, Sally. It don't matter what that kind thinks. Leave her be. What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?"
That was no way to speak of a lady, but Mrs. Floyd jumped from her chair and cried "Goody!", greatly consoled. Just before the evening meal, she put on a pink dress for which Lafe had professed admiration, and parted her hair in the middle. Had there been a woman within seven miles, she would not have done this, but Lafe liked it that way. So also did her husband, for that matter.
"As if I'd get jealous of Tom!" she sniffed. "Huh! you won't get Lafe that way, my lady."
I have said that they rode together every day. Sometimes Floyd watched the two meditatively. His instructions were being carried out—no doubt of that—and Johnson was good-natured. But the boss was a silent man and opposed no objection. As for Sally, if she gave it a thought at all, she probably found justification in a dozen reasons a woman would appreciate, which are beyond male ken.
Lafe helped her down from her horse late one afternoon, though she needed no help. And he held her for just the fraction of a second. She stiffened with an injured air, but she did not reprove him. On another occasion—they were on the veranda and it was growing to dusk—after staring helplessly at her for a full quarter of an hour, while she purposely said as little as possible and toyed with the lace of her handkerchief, her head on one side that he might get the benefit of her profile—suddenly he seized her in his arms and tried to kiss her. He did, in fact, obtain the merest peck at the tip of her ear.
"You darn fool!" she said, tearing loose.
Then she saw his face, and went hastily indoors and huddled in a chair in a dark corner. She sat there until called to supper, striving to fix recent happenings in proper sequence.
After putting the baby to bed, she beckoned Lafe on to the veranda. Her manner was hurried.
"Lafe, you've got to go away. You've got to go to-morrow."
"Why? I can't, Sally. There's three thousand more—"