“Everything down thar calls ter me. I craves hit all!”
Spurrier suddenly recalled old Cappeze’s half-frightened vehemence when the recluse had inveighed against the awakening of vain longings in his daughter. Now he changed his manner as he asked:
“I wonder if I’d offend you if I put a question. I don’t want to.”
“Ye mout try an’ see. I ain’t got no power ter answer twell I hears hit.”
“All right. I’ll risk it. Your father doesn’t talk 120 mountain dialect. His English is pure—and you were raised close to him. Why do you use—the other kind?”
She did not at once reply and, when she did, the astonishingly adaptable creature no longer employed vernacular, though she spoke slowly and guardedly as one might who ventured into a foreign tongue.
“My father has lived down below as well as here. He’s a gentleman, but he aims—I mean he intends—to live here now till he dies.”
As she paused Spurrier prompted her.
“Yes—and you?”
“My father thinks that while I do live here, I’d better fit into the life and talk in the phrases that don’t seem high-falutin’ to my neighbors.”