“Not me,” said Phyl, fondling the lovely but fleering-eyed head protruding above the lower door.
“So she doesn’t,” said Silas admiringly, “she’s taken to you—well, I don’t blame her. Here’s John Barleycorn,” opening another door, “own brother to the Fox, he’s Pap’s; he’s a bolter, and kicks like a duck gun. She’s got all her vice at one end of her and he at the other, match pair.” He whistled between his teeth as he put up the bars, then he shewed other horses, Phyl watching his every movement, and wondering what it was that gave pleasure to her in watching. Silas moved, or seemed to move, absolutely without effort, and his slim brown hands touched everything delicately, as though they were touching fragile porcelain, yet those same hands could bend an iron bar, or rein in John Barleycorn even when the bit was between the said J. B.’s teeth.
“That’s the horses,” said he, flinging open a coach-house door, “and that’s the shandrydan the governor still drives in when he goes to Charleston. Look at it. It was made in the forties, and you should see it with a darkey on the box and Pap inside, and all his luggage behind, and he going off to Charleston, and the nigger children running after it.”
Phyl inspected the mustard-yellow vehicle. Then he closed the door on it, put up the bar, and, the business of showing things over, did a little double shuffle as though Phyl were not present, or as though she were a boy friend and not a strange young woman.
“Say, do you like poetry?” said he, breaking off and seeming suddenly to remember her presence.
“No,” said Phyl. “At least—”
“‘There was an old hen and she had a wooden leg, She went to the barn and she laid a wooden egg, She laid it right down by the barn—don’t you think.’”
“Well?” said she, laughing.
“‘It’s just about time for another little drink—’ some sense in poetry like that, isn’t there? But all the drinks are in the house and I don’t want to go in. I’m hiding from Pap. Last night when he was ratty with rheumatism, he let out at me, saying the young people weren’t any good, saying Maria Pinckney was the only person he knew with sense in her head, called me a name because I poured him out a dose of liniment instead of medicine, by mistake—though he didn’t swallow it—and wished Maria was here. So I just sent Jake, the page boy, off with a wire to her; didn’t tell any one, just sent it. Come on and look at the garden—you’ve got to look at the garden, you know.”