“Thank you.”
“What fer?”
“For calling me Jack.”
Then her cheeks colored deeply and she wheeled to her work again. But after a little she faced him once more to say half angrily:
“I called ye Jack because ye called me Glory. You’ve always put a Miss afore hit till now, an’ I ’lowed ye’d done made up yore mind ter be friendly at last.”
“I’ve always wanted to be friendly,” he assured her. “It was you who began with a hickory switch and went on with hard words in Latin.”
The girl laughed, and the peal of her mirth transmuted their status and dispelled her self-consciousness. She came over and stood looking down at him with violet eyes mischievously a-sparkle.
“The co’te,” she announced, “hes carefully weighed there evidence in ther case of Jack Spurrier, charged with ther willful murder of Bob White, and is ready to enter jedgment. Jack Spurrier, stand up ter be sentenced!”
The man rose to his feet and stood with such well-feigned abjectness of suspense that she had to fight back the laughter from her eyes to preserve her own pose of judicial gravity.