"Gentleman? Who's he? Whar's he from?" the old woman asked—forgetting that she had spoken to him.
"I told you oncet he's Miss Dory's frien' an' from de Norf. Do be quiet," Mandy Ann blew into the deaf ears.
"From the Nawth. I don't like the Nawth, 'case I—" the old lady began, but Mandy Ann choked her with a muffin, and she did not finish her sentence and tell why she disliked the North.
Eudora's face was scarlet, but she did not interfere. Her grandmother was in better hands than hers, and more forceful.
"Granny is queer sometimes," she said by way of apology, while her guest bowed in token that he understood, and the meal proceeded in quiet with one exception. Granny was choked with eating too fast, and Mandy Ann struck her on her back and shook her up, and dropped her dinner-plate and broke it in her excitement.
"For de Lawd's sake, 'tan't no use," she said, gathering up the pieces and taking them to the kitchen, where Sonsie laughed till the tears ran at Mandy Ann's attempt "to be gran'," and its result.
Meanwhile the stranger ate Sonsie's corn cakes and muffins, and said they were good, and drank muddy coffee, sweetened with brown sugar out of a big thick cup, and thought of his dainty service at home, and glanced at the girl opposite him with a great pity, which, however, did not move him one whit from his purpose. He had told her his plan and she had accepted it, and he told it again when, after supper, she walked with him through the clearing and the woods to the main road which led to the river. He did the talking, while she answered yes or no, with a sound of tears in her voice. When they reached the highway they stopped by the sunken grave, and leaning against the fence which inclosed it, Eudora removed her sunbonnet, letting the moon shine upon her face, as it had done when she sat in the clearing. It was very white but there were no tears now in her eyes. She was forcing them back and she tried to smile as she said, "You are very kind, and I think I understand what you want, and here by this grave I promise all you ask, and will do my best—my very best."
Her lips began to quiver and her voice to break, for the visit from which she had expected so much had proved a blank, and her high hopes were dead as the woman by whose grave she stood. She had folded her hands one over the other upon the top rail of the fence, and her companion looked at them and thought how small they were and shapely, too, although brown with the work she had to do when Jake and Mandy Ann were both gone and Sonsie came only at meal times. He was not a brute. He was simply a proud, cold, selfish man, whose will had seldom been crossed, and who found himself in a tight place from which he could not wholly extricate himself. He was sorry for Eudora, for he guessed how desolate she would be when he was gone, and there was nothing left but that home in the clearing, with old granny and Mandy Ann. He had not seen Jake, of whom Eudora now spoke, saying, "Our house never seemed so poor to me till I seen you in it. It will be better when Jake comes, for he is to fix it up—he knows how."
It was the only excuse she had made, and she did it falteringly, while her companion's heart rose up in his throat and made him very uncomfortable, as he thought of Jake and Mandy Ann caring for this girl, while his income was larger than he could spend. It had not occurred to him to offer her money till that moment, and he did not know now that she would take it. Turning his back to her as if looking at something across the road, he counted a roll of bills, and turning back took one of the little brown hands resting on the rail in his and pressed the roll into it. Just for an instant the slim fingers held fast to his hand—then, as she felt the bills and saw what they were, she drew back and dropped them upon the sand.
"I can't; no, I can't," she said, when he urged them upon her, telling her it was his right to give and hers to take.