She had taken off her sunbonnet, and was fanning herself with it, as she leaned with her elbows upon the counter, and let her eyes travel lingeringly along the well-lined shelves. ’Polyte stood staring into her face with a sense of aggravation that her presence, her manner, always stirred up in him.
The face was colorless but for the red, curved line of the lips. Her eyes were dark, wide, innocent, questioning eyes, and her black hair was plastered smooth back from the forehead and temples. There was no trace of any intention of coquetry in her manner. He resented this as a token of indifference toward his sex, and thought it inexcusable.
“Well, Azélie, if it’s anything you don’t see, ask fo’ it,” he suggested, with what he flattered[flattered] himself was humor. But there was no responsive humor in Azélie’s composition. She seriously drew a small flask from her pocket.
“Popa say, if you want to let him have a li’le dram, ’count o’ his pains that’s ’bout to cripple him.”
“Yo’ pa knows as well as I do we don’t sell w’isky. Mr. Mathurin don’t carry no license.”
“I know. He say if you want to give ’im a li’le dram, he’s willin’ to do some work fo’ you.”
“No! Once fo’ all, no!” And ’Polyte reached for the day-book, in which to enter the articles he had given to her.
But Azélie’s needs were not yet satisfied. She wanted tobacco; he would not give it to her. A spool of thread; he rolled one up, together with two sticks of peppermint candy, and placed it in her pail. When she asked for a bottle of coal-oil, he grudgingly consented, but assured her it would be useless to cudgel her brain further, for he would positively let her have nothing more. He disappeared toward the coal-oil tank, which was hidden from view behind the piled-up boxes on the counter. When she heard him searching for an empty quart bottle, and making a clatter with the tin funnels, she herself withdrew from the counter against which she had been leaning.
After they quitted the store, ’Polyte, with a perplexed expression upon his face, leaned for a moment against one of the whitewashed pillars, watching the girl cross the yard. She had folded her sunbonnet into a pad, which she placed beneath the heavy pail that she balanced upon her head. She walked upright, with a slow, careful tread. Two of the yard dogs that had stood a moment before upon the threshold of the store door, quivering and wagging their tails, were following her now, with a little businesslike trot. ’Polyte called them back.
The cabin which the girl occupied with her father, her grandmother, and her little brother Sauterelle, was removed some distance from the plantation house, and only its pointed roof could be discerned like a speck far away across the field of cotton, which was all in bloom. Her figure soon disappeared from view, and ’Polyte emerged from the shelter of the gallery, and started again toward his interrupted task. He turned to say to the planter, who was keeping up his measured tramp above: