So Lethie was made happy again by seeing Fult come to claim her. And she was no longer afraid of shaming him. Joy flushed her cheeks. She hoped he would say something about her changed appearance; but when he seemed abstracted and failed to, she was not deeply disappointed. Her unselfish heart demanded very little. To be near him, and to catch Isabel's reassuring smile across the circle, filled her cup.
That evening after the "sing," when the others, Charlie and Charlotta, Thad and Ruby and Lethie were starting down, and Fult, banjo in hand, prepared to linger, Isabel told him that she would be too busy about other things to learn ballads that night, and he must hurry down with the others. He went, with a darkened brow.
The following days brought to him always the same bafflement. Isabel was as friendly and smiling as ever, but never by any chance or effort could he see her alone; Lethie was always on hand, and Isabel was especially solicitous, even affectionate, toward her.
He waited, however, in expectation of the ride they were to have together on Sunday, to a funeral occasion over on Clinch. Several of the women, and some of the young folks from the village, were going in a party, for the first time deserting the Sunday School, which was to be conducted that day by just the kindergartner and the nurse, with Giles Kent's assistance.
The pleasure of the women in the trip was marred, however, by some shooting in the village the night before—the first since they had been settled on the hill. The nurse, coming up early in the morning, after sitting up with Polly Ainslee, who had typhoid, reported that it was not done by Fult and his crowd, as the women had at first feared, but by some of the very young boys, who had in some way gotten whiskey.
"Bob Ainslee came in the room where his mother was half dead with fever, and shot several times into the ceiling and then fell over on the other bed, too drunk to sit up," she said. "I wonder who is giving those boys liquor?"
When they went down to the hotel to mount their nags, Virginia spoke of the disturbance to Fult.
"I was so afraid at first it was your crowd," she said, "and so very thankful to hear it wasn't."
Fult flushed. "Had you forgot what I done to Charlie the Fourth of July?" he asked.
"I didn't really think you'd fail us," she said. "I wonder where those poor boys, Bob and the others, are getting whiskey?"