"Have you never tried to kiss a girl?" Mavis had asked quietly, and
Jason reddened.
"Yes," he admitted reluctantly.
"And did she always let ye?"
"Well, no—not—"
"Very well, then," Mavis snapped, and she flaunted away.
It was different now, the matter was more serious, and now they were cousins and Hawns. Blood spoke to blood and answered to blood, and when at the end Mavis broke into a fit of shame and tears, a burst of light opened in Jason's brain and his heart raged not only for Mavis, but for himself. Gray had been ashamed to go to that dance with Mavis, and Marjorie had been ashamed to go with him—there was a chasm, and with every word that Mavis spoke the wider that chasm yawned.
"Oh, I know it," she sobbed. "I couldn't believe it at first, but I know it now"—she began to drop back into her old speech—"they come down in the mountains, and grandpap was nice to 'em, and when we come up here they was nice to us. But down thar and up here we was just queer and funny to 'em—an' we're that way yit. They're good-hearted an' they'd do anything in the world fer us, but we ain't their kind an' they ain't ourn. They knowed it and we didn't—but I know it now."
So that was the reason Marjorie had hesitated when Jason asked her to go to the dance with him.
"Then why did she go?" he burst out. He had mentioned no name even, but
Mavis had been following his thoughts.
"Any gal 'ud do that fer fun," she answered, "an' to git even with
Gray."