He made the comparison with a breath of relief that that time of wretchedness and rapture was past.
He heard the sound of hoofs approaching from behind, and whistled to heel his three scrawny hounds. When he made sure of the rider's identity, he shifted his gun to his other shoulder, and pulled off his remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, as with its wearer's coloring.
"How is Melissa, Bud?"
Some of Sydney Carroll's friends thought her voice her greatest charm.
"And the baby? She's a dear baby! I think she looks like Melissa, don't you?"
"She's tol'able—they's tol'able. Yes, Miss Sydney, they says so," replied the lad, whose condition as the father of a family seemed to cast him into depths of bashfulness.
"It's a great responsibility for you, Bud. I hope you feel it. And I hope that you won't let this happen often."
Sydney gravely tapped her eye with her finger, while Bud stole a shamed hand over his own visual organ, which was surrounded by the paling glories of a recent contusion. The color mounted to his hair as he stammered,—
"Hit wasn't that—that what you think, Miss Sydney. Hit was a stick o' wood——" But his voice trailed off into nothingness before the girl's gaze.
"Bud, I know—I heard how it happened. Don't tell me what isn't true."