"Oh," said Miss Jennie, with a demure smile, "perhaps I couldn't draw him out," and Margaret flushed to have caught the deftly tossed bait so readily.
A moment later the Lieutenant was gathering up the reins, with Miss Jennie by his side. He gave a bow to Margaret, and Miss Jennie nodded to Chad.
"Come see me when you come to town, Mr. Buford," she called, as though to an old friend, and still Chad was dumb, though he lifted his hat gravely.
At no time was Chad alone with Margaret, and he was not sorry—her manner so puzzled him. The three lads and three girls walked together through Mrs. Dean's garden with its grass walks and flower beds and vegetable patches surrounded with rose bushes. At the lower edge they could see the barn with sheep in the yard around it, and there were the very stiles where Harry and Margaret had sat in state when Dan and Chad were charging in the tournament. The thing might never have happened for any sign from Harry or Dan or Margaret, and Chad began to wonder if his past or his present were a dream.
How fine this courtesy was Chad could not realize. Neither could he know that the favor Margaret had shown him when he was little more than outcast he must now, as an equal, win for himself. Miss Jennie had called him "Mr. Buford." He wondered what Margaret would call him when he came to say good-by. She called him nothing. She only smiled at him.
"You must come to see us soon again," she said, graciously, and so said all the Deans.
The Major was quiet going home, and Miss Lucy drowsed. All evening the Major was quiet.
"If a fight does come," he said, when they were going to bed, "I reckon I'm not too old to take a hand."
"And I reckon I'm not too young," said Chad.