The puzzled face of the colonel broke into a hearty smile.
"Well, bless my soul, it's Jason. You've come up to see your folks?"
And then he explained what Marjorie meant to explain.
"We're not hunting with guns—we just chase 'em. Hang your artillery on a fence-rail, bring your horse through that gate, and join us."
He turned and Marjorie, with him, called back over her shoulder: "Hurry up now, Jason."
Little Jason sat still, but he saw Marjorie ride straight for the pony, he heard her cry to Mavis, saw her wave one hand toward him, and then Mavis rode for him at a gallop, waving her whip to him as she came. The boy gave no answering signal, but sat still, hard-eyed, cool. Before she was within twenty yards of him he had taken in every detail of the changes in her and the level look of his eyes stopped her happy cry, and made her grow quite pale with the old terror of giving him offence. Her hair looked different, her clothes were different, she wore gloves, and she had a stick in one hand with a head like a cane and a loop of leather at the other end. For these drawbacks, the old light in her eyes and face quite failed to make up, for while Jason looked, Mavis was looking, too, and the boy saw her eyes travelling him down from head to foot: somehow he was reminded of the way Marjorie had looked at him back in the mountains and somehow he felt that the change that he resented in Mavis went deeper than her clothes. The morbidly sensitive spirit of the mountaineer in him was hurt, the chasm yawned instead of closing, and all he said shortly was:
"Whar'd you git them new-fangled things?"
"Marjorie give 'em to me. She said fer you to bring yo' hoss in—hit's more fun than I ever knowed in my life up here."
"Hit is?" he half-sneered. "Well, you git back to yo' high-falutin' friends an' tell 'em I don't hunt nothin' that-a-way."
"I'll stop right now an' go home with ye. I guess you've come to see yo' mammy."