“How fort’nit, how werry fort’nit,” he observed. “Now you kin take keer o’ Miss Looisy on her ride, ef you please, sah, fo’ my hoss done cast his shoe, and I got to turn off dis road and take him to de black-smiff!”
“Uncle Abe, you are an old story-teller. There is nothing the matter with the horse. I’ll tell Aunt Thalia if you don’t come straight along with me!” threatened Molly in comical distress and anger combined; but the cunning old fellow was already galloping off, leaving her to the tender mercies of Cecil Laurens.
“Do not mind him, Miss Barry,” said the young man. “I will take as good care of you as Uncle Abe.”
She pouted and turned her horse’s head.
“I am going back to Ferndale!”
He caught her reins and held them as he had done before.
“You are not!” he said, vexedly. “Why, what a baby you are! Why should you go back and get that old darky a scolding from Mrs. Barry? The old soul is only going into Maple Shade to chat with my servants. He has known me ever since I was a baby, and feels safe in trusting you to my care. Mrs. Barry is my godmother, too, so how can you be so unreasonable? Come.”
“I am acting foolishly,” she thought, and yielded to that one word of commingled command and entreaty, telling herself that she was too anxious for a letter to turn back now.
Cecil Laurens knew well the magnetic power of that low, winning voice of his. He smiled slightly as she turned and rode on by his side up the mountain.
“You and I almost had a battle last night,” he went on. “After I went away I thought it over, and decided that you—we—had been very silly. It seemed so strange for a Barry and a Laurens to quarrel. Why, our families have been neighbors and friends almost a century,” proudly.