“Don’t haf to think. One look at him is enough.”
Thereafter a softer light—the light of pity—shone in the eyes of the girl. “Poor fellow, he does look kind o’ peaked; but this climate will bring him up to the scratch,” she added, with optimistic faith in her beloved hills.
A moment later the down-coming stage pulled in, loaded to the side-lines, and everybody on it seemed to know Berea McFarlane. It was hello here and hello there, and how are ye between, with smacks from the women and open cries of “pass it around” on the part of the men, till Norcross marveled at the display.
“She seems a great favorite,” he observed to Yancy.
“Who—Berrie? She’s the whole works up at Bear Tooth. Good thing she don’t want to go to Congress—she’d lay Jim Worthy on the shelf.”
Berea’s popularity was not so remarkable as her manner of receiving it. She took it all as a sort of joke—a good, kindly joke. She shook hands with her male admirers, and smacked the cheeks of her female friends with an air of modest deprecation. “Oh, you don’t mean it,” was one of her phrases. She enjoyed this display of affection, but it seemed not to touch her deeply, and her impartial, humorous acceptance of the courtship of the men was equally charming, though this was due, according to remark, to the claims of some rancher up the line.
She continued to be the theme of conversation at the dinner-table and yet remained unembarrassed, and gave back quite as good as she received.
“If I was Cliff,” declared one lanky admirer, “I’d be shot if I let you out of my sight. It ain’t safe.”
She smiled broadly. “I don’t feel scared.”
“Oh, you’re all right! It’s the other feller—like me—that gets hurt.”