While they were talking, Kitty heard the rattle of buggy wheels. The sound came nearer and nearer. Whoever was driving was singing, to pass the time away, and the quick ear of Kitty recognised the voice of George Denham. He went dashing by; but he must have seen the girl standing on the veranda, for he cried out, "Good night, Miss Kitty!" and then caught up the burden of his song again as he went whirling down the road. Kitty wrung her hands. She went in to her mother with tears in her eyes.
"O mother! George has gone by without stopping. What shall we do?"
Mrs. Kendrick was a very practical woman. Knowing nothing of the freshet in Murder Creek, she was amazed as well as amused at Kitty's tragic attitude.
"Well, it's most too soon for George to begin to take his meals here, I reckon," she said dryly. "You'd better make you a cup of ginger-tea and go to bed."
"But, mother, there's a freshet in Murder Creek. Oh, why didn't he stop?"
Mrs. Kendrick was kneeling on the floor cutting out clothes for the plough- hands,—"slaving for her niggers," as she called it. She paused in her work and looked at Kitty, as if to see whether she had heard her aright.
"Well, upon my word!" she exclaimed, after critically surveying her daughter, "I don't see how girls can be so weak-minded. Many a man as good as George Denham has crossed Murder Creek in a freshet. I don't see but what he's big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself."
"Oh," exclaimed Kitty, going from window to window, and vainly endeavouring to peer out into the darkness, "why didn't he stop?"
"Well," said Mrs. Kendrick, resuming the use of her shears, "if you'll try to worry along and stand it this time, I'll send out and have a fence built across the big road, and get the niggers to light a bonfire; and we'll stop him the next time he comes along. I'll have to do my duty by my own children, I reckon. But don't be alarmed," she continued, perceiving that Kitty's distress was genuine. "You may have to fly around here and get George some supper, after all. I've been waiting on niggers all day; and even if I hadn't, I'm too old and fagged out to be rushing in amongst the pots and kettles to please George Denham."
George Denham rattled down the road, singing of "Barbara Allen," but thinking of Kitty Kendrick. Suddenly his horse shied, and then he heard somebody call him.