Mrs. McNabb smiled bravely and took Ogden's slender palm in her large, capable grasp. She wore a sedate black bonnet; her gray hair was parted in the middle and fell right and left in two wide, crinkly folds.
"And I want pa to come, too; no dodging." An elderly man came forward reluctantly, in his loose, short trousers and his thick boots with broad, square toes; he seemed to find Ogden, in his modified tourist guise, a disconcerting object. He lifted up his shrewd but retiring eyes, placing one embarrassed hand on his grizzled chin whiskers and giving George the other; it was rough, and the nails were broken.
George shook hands with the old fellow—who went well enough with other features of the Wisconsin landscape: the shaggy tamarack swamps, the gashed sides of gravelly "hog-backs," the long stretches of disordered barbed-wire fences, the rusty reds of depots and storehouses, and the marshy ponds, edged by the ragged scantlings of gigantic ice-houses.
Cornelia did not perceive this harmony—or ignored it.
"Yes," she declared, "ma's the best ma, and pa ain't far behind. Now don't shy, pa; Mr. Ogden is more scary than you are. He'd been trying for near three months to ask me to go to the theatre with him, when along came Burt and plumped out and asked me inside of a week. Burt's enterprising; no mistake."
The old people smiled at each other, half embarrassed by Cornelia's frankness.
"But we won't shut out George—oh, dear! I mean Mr. Ogden—altogether. Bear witness, both of you: I ask him to be one of my ushers." George stared. Was the girl meaning to be married in church after—everything? Then he bowed. "On Abbie's account—if at all," he thought.
"Going to Coonie for the Fourth, I suppose?" Cornelia continued.
"Coonie?"
"Oh, well—'Con'm'woc, if you must have it all. Well, we're on the move, too. Good-by. But"—meaningly—"you'd find us all again in town pretty soon; and if pa and ma don't see the whole place from the tip-top of the Clifton, my name is McMudd. On a clear day, too—when you can tell where the smoke ends and the land begins. Good-by. Our house is on the right, a mile farther; watch out for it."