“You don’t look like a bad fellow,” she responded heartily.
“I didn’t know you were going up on the boat,” said Beetrus, regarding with gentle indifference the brim of his hat, after he replaced it.
“You know I couldn’t go off on the train and leave matters in the shape they are. I never sold a bill of goods in New Harmony in my life, but I’m going to try to make a satisfactory trade for myself now, if the house turns me off for it.”
Beetrus parted her lips smiling, and this time met him in the eyes. Without formulating the fact, she knew there was sterling man under the crust of acquired coarseness. The brutal plan he had formed concerning her, and which he was now scarcely willing to acknowledge to himself, began to withdraw from betwixt them like the mist which already wavered on the hills.
“I believe it will be a clear day to-morrow,” the girl said, falling back upon good commonplace.
“Do you believe it will be a clear day to-morrow, Mrs. Jenkins?” inquired Poundstone.
“Well, it seems like it might be pretty,” responded the widow, turning up her face to see the pinkness reflected from the west.
“Then I believe it will too,” said the commercial traveler, with a devout air, which was unmoved by Beetrus’s laughing out,—
“A great deal prettier and clearer than to-day has been.”