“You won’t tell—will you, Lavina? I’ll tell you how it all happened, some day. Then I’ll leave this country.”
“You’ll not,” she contradicted. “You’ll stay right here as long as I do, and I won’t tell just so long as you keep from trying to make Lorena Jane believe how great you are. But at the first word of your heroic actions, or the cultured society you were always used to—”
“You’ll never hear of them,” he said eagerly, “never. I knew you wouldn’t make trouble, Lavina, for you always were such a good, kind-hearted girl.”
He offered his hand to her, sheepishly, and she gave it a vixenish slap.
“Don’t try any of your skim-milk praise on me,” she said, tartly. “Huh! You, that Lorena thought was a pillar of cultured society! When, the Lord knows, you wouldn’t have known how to read the addresses on your own letters if I hadn’t taught you!”
He moved to the door in a crestfallen manner, and stood there a moment, moistening his lips, and apparently swallowing words that could not be uttered.
“That’s so, Lavina,” he said, at last, and went out.
“There!” she muttered aggrievedly—“that’s Alf Leek, just as he always was. Give him a chance, and he’d ride over any one; but get the upper hand of him, and he is 277 meeker than Moses. Not that much meekness is needed to come up to Moses, either.” Then, after an impatient tattoo, she exclaimed:
“Gracious me! I do wish he hadn’t looked so crushed, and had talked back a little.”