"Oh! she'd enough to say—gals love to talk, you know, when they get with one another, and Dus and I talked together half an hour, or longer. She'd plenty to say, though it wunt do for me to sit here and tell it to you, lest somebody wonder I stay so long in the mill."
"You can tell me if she sent any message or answer to my note?"
"She never breathed a syllable about what you'd writ. I warrant you she's close-mouthed enough, when she gets a line from a young man. Do you think her so desp'rate handsome as Zeph says she is?"
This boded ill, but it was a question that it was politic to answer, and to answer with some little discretion. If I lost the services of Lowiny, my main stay was gone.
"She is well enough to look at, but I've seen quite as handsome young women, lately. But, handsome or not, she is one of your own sex, and is not to be deserted in her trouble."
"Yes, indeed," answered Lowiny, with an expression of countenance that told me at once, the better feelings of her sex had all returned again, "and I'll not desart her, though father drive me out of the settlement. I am tired of all this squatting, and think folks ought to live as much in one spot as they can. What's best to be done about Dus Malbone—perhaps she'd like well enough to marry Zeph?"
"Did you see or hear anything while with her, to make you think so? I am anxious to know what she said."
"La! She said sights of things; but most of her talk was about old Chainbearer. She never named your name so much as once!"
"Did she name Zephaniah's? I make no doubt that anxiety on account of her uncle was her chief care. What are her intentions, and will she remain near that tree until you come?"
"She stays under a rock not a great way from the tree, and there she'll stay till I go to meet her, at the chestnut. We had our talk under that rock, and it's easy enough to find her there."