“Only it’s great to be invited, with all the supper ready before hand and waiting—it sure is!”
“You usually earn your supper with us, girl,” I said, as we walked toward the cabin. “There is no one can bake such cakes as yours, and as for your cherry pies—well, I have no words!”
She tossed her head. And then catching sight of a long-tailed chat, tumbling and rollicking above a hawthorn thicket, she stopped, her head poised high, her delicate subtle chin lifted, her expression rapt. All unconscious of my eyes she began making a funny little noise in her throat:
“Crr—crr—whrr—tr—tr—tr—”
It was pure felicity to look at Wanza Lyttle as she stood thus. She wore a gown of pink cotton, and her tangled maize-colored hair was looped back from her face with a knot of vivid rose-pink ribbon. Her wide-brimmed beribboned hat hung on her shoulders. Her collar was rolled away from a throat of milk. Her sleeves were tucked up, exposing brown, slender arms. Her feet were encased in white stockings and sandals. She was a picturesque, daring figure. And her face!—it was like a flame in a lamp of marble.
Her father, old Griffith Lyttle, was fond of dilating on the beauty of his daughter to me. Once he said: “She do be the prettiest young gal astepping—but, man, I reckon she’ll see trouble with that face o’ hers. It’s the face as goes with a hot temper.” Looking at her now it was difficult to associate anything but loveliness of disposition with her face, which seemed at this moment fairly angelic.
“The chat has a variety of songs, Wanza,” I ventured. “He is laughing at you. Unless you can caw like a crow, and mew like a cat, and bark like a dog you can’t attract him.”
“I like him because he is so bouncing and jolly,” the girl answered. “I like bouncing, jolly people, Mr. Dale.”
We walked on to the cabin. When we entered the kitchen and Joey saw us, he gave a shout of joy.
“Now, I’d liever have Wanza to supper than the other woman, Mr. David,” he vouchsafed. “I like the other woman, course I do, but I ain’t used of her yet.”