"Mind now," she said, "not to get your thoughts tangled up with no young gals you may see there. One's jest come in this morning from the level land. Ricollect, they hain't for sech as you. Keep your mind fixed stiddy on what you're a-going atter, and don't get witched off by no young face with naught behind hit."
When they arrived at the tents, the heifer was received with warm appreciation by two of the women, whom Jeems judged to be the heads, though they were astonishingly fair and rosy and young and neatly dressed, to have reached the ancient age of twenty-eight. From a safe distance in the background, Jeems inspected each, narrowly and appraisingly. When the heifer had been anchored to a tree, one of the women returned to a group of old people she appeared to be teaching, near by, and the other settled down to letter-writing under a more distant tree. Fult had hurried up-hill, and Jeems slowly followed, gazing with solemn, owlish eyes upon all the strange things and people he saw.
The lowest tents were deserted, but in the larger, gayly decorated one farther up, two or three dozen mothers, with babies, were gathered, and the nurse was giving a talk on the care of infants, using one in her demonstration. She was giving it a warm bath when Jeems peered into the tent. He was at once transfixed.
"That air woman knows how to handle a young-un," he said to himself, after watching the proceedings for some time, "and is a good looker, too."
No mother present could have been more appreciative of the deft ways of the nurse than was Jeems, out of the fullness of his own experience.
After this was over, he went on to the top of the spur, where the young folks of different ages were gathered, in several large groups and circles, playing games. In the largest circle, where the young men and maidens were playing "Old Bald Eagle," a game that was a combination of quadrille and Virginia reel, with a song accompaniment, Fult was leading, and his partner was a young and extremely pretty stranger, at the sight of whom Jeems stopped stone-still and gazed with all his eyes. Aunt Ailsie's warning came to him with a pang after a while: "Ricollect, sech as that hain't for you." He sighed deeply, and felt a dull anger with Fult's youth and beauty.
Still another very young and pretty one—the one with the "crow's-wing hair and blue eyes"—sat on a bench not far away; but Darcy Kent was at her side.
After a long while, the play-games stopped, and the merry crowd trooped down the hill and home—all save Fult and a few of his cronies, who stopped at the big tent, where Fult was soon picking a banjo and singing ballads for the stranger. Jeems leaned against a tree-trunk outside, and waited for the fateful hour of milking to arrive.
Finally, an anxious call came from below for Fult, and all in the tent went down, Jeems following at a little distance. Fult joined the group of women behind the cooking-tent. When Jeems arrived, he saw that they were gathered anxiously about the heifer. One of them, Virginia, was saying to Fult:—