"She seems to have a good 'eal to say about him, anyway," repeated Anson, in a meditative way.
"Oh, that's natural enough. They are two young folks together," replied Bert, with a careless accent, to remove any suspicion which his hasty utterance might have raised in Anson's mind.
"Wal, I guess you're right," agreed Anson, after a pause, relieved. This relief was made complete when in other letters which came she said less and less about Kendall. If they had been more experienced, they would have been disturbed by this suspicious fact.
Then again, when Anson wrote asking "What has become of that Kendall you wrote so much about?" she replied that he was there, and began writing of him again in a careless sort of way, with the craft of woman already manifest in the change of front.
Spring came again, and that ever-recurring miracle, the good green grass, sprang forth from its covering of ice and snow, up from its hiding-place in the dark, cold sod.
Again the two men set to work ferociously at the seeding. Up early in the wide, sweet dawn, toiling through the day behind harrow and seeder, coming in at noon to a poor and badly cooked meal, hurrying back to the field and working till night, coming in at sundown so tired that one leg could hardly be dragged by the other—this was their daily life.
One day, as they were eating their supper of sour bread and canned beans, Gearheart irritatedly broke out: "Ans, why don't you git married? It 'u'd simplify matters a good 'eal if you should. 'Old Russ' is no good."
"What's the matter with your gittin' married?" replied Anson, imperturbably pinching off the cooked part of the loaf, skilfully leaving the doughy part.
"I ain't on the marry; that's all."
"Neither am I."