"If you'd grind the coffee, Will?" she suggested.
"Sure! Where's the hand organ?"
He put the mill between his knees, and
converted the beans to powder, to the tune of
"Old dog Tray" through his nose, which Miss
Mattie found very amusing.
She measured out the coffee, one spoonful for each cup, and one for the pot. Red watched her patiently, and when she had finished, he threw in the rest of the contents of the mill-drawer. "I like it fairly strong," said he in explanation.
"Now, Will!" protested Miss Mattie.
"Look at you! That will be as bitter as boneset!"
"Thin her up with milk and she'll be all right," replied Red.
"Well, such wasteful ways I never did see.
Nobody'd think you were a day over fifteen."
"I'm not," said Red stoutly, "and," catching her chin in his hand and turning her face up toward him—"Nobody'd put your score much higher than that neither, if they trusted to their eyes this morning."
The compliment hit so tender a place that Miss Mattie lacked the resolution to tear it out, besides, it was so honest that it sounded much less like a compliment than a plain statement of fact. She bent hastily over the fire. "I'm glad I look young, Will," she said softly.
"So'm I!" he assented heartily. "What's the sense in being old, anyhow? I'm as limber and good for myself as ever I was, in spite of my forty years."