“Come by my shack a minit,” he said.
The girl said nothing; that in itself would be another scandal, of course, but what was the difference what folks might say? At his cabin he reached up and lifted mother and child from the old nag, and the girl's hair brushed his cheek.
“You stay hyeh with the baby,” he said quietly, “an' I'll take yo' meal home.” She looked at him with mingled trust and despair. What was the difference?
It was near sundown when Lum got back. Smoke was coming out of his rickety chimney, and the wail of an old ballad reached his ears. Singing, the girl did not hear him coming, and through the open door he saw that the room had been tidied up and that she was cooking supper. The baby was playing on the floor. She turned at the creak of his footstep on the threshold and for the first time she spoke.
“Supper'll be ready in a minit.”
A few minutes later he was seated at the table alone and the girl, with the baby on one arm, was waiting on him. By and by he pushed back his chair, pulled out his pipe, and sat down in the doorway. Dusk was coming. In the shadowy depths below a wood-thrush was fluting his last notes for that day. Then for the first time each called the other by name.
“Marthy, the circuit-rider'll be 'roun' two weeks from next Sunday.”
“All right, Lum.”
The Marquise of Queensberry