Pondering this item, she put her hands to her head. One of them found her cap which a low branch had raked awry; the other grasped a tangle of hair that muffled the other side of her head, regrettably out of place. From this surprising touch of things she divined the picture she must be making. More, she saw herself dash into this sylvan opening apparently in mad pursuit of a frenzied cow; for, as a requisite to keeping her seat in the saddle, she had been compelled to seem as eager in the chase as Cooney himself. She sank—collapsed, rather—upon the broad slab of stone before the door, laughing weakly.
The youth looked down at her with puzzled eyes in which she saw alarm rising.
"But I didn't try to chase your cow—I didn't want to," she broke out. "It was your horse; his idea, his alone."
There was such fine, shy commiseration in his face as she rose that she laughed again.
"Of course it must have been Cooney's fault," he said. "I might have known that. He used to have to drive her in every day." He regarded her for a moment with a sort of dumb chivalry, then politely offered his hand, saying, with a curious little air of taught formality: "I'm very glad to see you. Thank you so much for coming!"
In avoiding each other's eyes, as their hands fell apart, they both looked out to the person who stooped busily over a deer hide in the shade of the big hemlock. His view of the circumstance was revealing itself. Only his rounded back could be seen, but this rose and fell in the rapid, rhythmic convulsions of silent laughter. They turned quickly back to each other and smiled in a sudden sympathy with his mirth.
"If I may have a glass of water—" she suggested, as a device for establishing ease between them.
"Of course!" He called to the person under the tree, arresting the back at the height of one of its recurrent spasms. The face turned upon them was rigidly sad, a face of almost saturnine solemnity, the face of one who has been brought to view life as an engine of woe. As he ambled dejectedly toward them, his head bowed from his work-bent shoulders, the lines of grief in his face seemed to deepen, and a gnarled hand tugged at the already drooping ends of his long mustache, as if he would be assured that they, also, testified to the world's objectionableness.
"Mr. Crider, this is Mrs. Laithe—she has come to see us." The youth achieved this with austere formality. The sad one nodded and put forth his hand with a funereal "Glad to know you, ma'am!" as if they met at the open grave of a friend.
"Ben, won't you go to the spring and get her some fresh water? She's thirsty. She's had a hard ride."