"The barn is man's instituted refuge in the time of mop and broom cyclones in the house. I reckon you can't get on to your rock-picking in the fields now, but you really hadn't oughter dig up an oil-well to-day anyway; it might kinder overshadow the excitement of the party."
"Mr. Alloway, has any other survey of this river bend been made before?" asked Everett as he looked keenly at Uncle Tucker, while he
lit his cigar from the cob pipe the old gentleman accommodatingly handed him.
"Well, yes, there was a young fellow came poking around here not so long ago with a little hammer pecking at the rocks. I didn't pay much attention to him, though. He never stayed but one day, and I was a-cutting clover hay, and too busy to notice him much 'cept to ask him in to dinner. He couldn't seem to manage his chicken dumplings for feeding his eyes with Rose Mary, and he didn't have time to give up much information about sech little things as oil-wells and phosphate beds. You know, they has to be a good touch of frost over a man's ears before he can tend to business, with good-looking dimity passing around him." And Uncle Tucker laughed as he resumed the puffing of his pipe.
"And after the frost they are not at all immune—to such dimity," answered Everett with an echo of Uncle Tucker's laugh, as a slight color rose up under the tan of his thin face.
As he spoke he ruffled his own dark red mop of hair, which was slightly sprinkled with gray, over his temples. Everett was tall, broad and muscular, but thin almost to gauntness, and his face habitually wore the expression of deep weariness. His eyes were red-brown and disillusioned, except when they joined with his well-cut mouth in a smile that brought an almost boyish beauty back over his whole expression. There was decided youth in the glance he bestowed upon Uncle Tucker, whose attention was riveted on the manoeuvers of the General and Tobe, who were busy with a pair of old kitchen knives in an attack upon the grass growing between the cracks of the front walk.
"So you have had no report as to what that survey was?" Everett asked Uncle Tucker, again bringing him back to the subject in hand. "Do you know who sent the man you speak of to prospect on your land?"
"Never thought to ask him," answered
Uncle Tucker, still with the utmost unconcern. "Maybe Rose Mary knows. Women generally carry a reticule around with 'em jest to poke facts into that they gather together from nothing put pure wantin'-to-know. Ask her."
And as he spoke Uncle Tucker began to busy himself getting out the grease cans, with the evident intention of putting in a morning lubricating the farm implements in general.