Mrs. Mayfield and Lou were helped into the wagon, Jasper climbed up and had begun to swing his long lash when Margaret cried out: "You haven't fixed any place for me."
"For you?" Jasper replied. "Didn't know you was a goin'."
"Oh, you think you kin make me stay at home all day by myse'f, do you? All the time studyin' how you kin go away an' leave me. Well, I'll show you wuther I'm goin' or not."
The old man laughed. "Oh, pleased to have you come along, as the hawk said to the chicken." She climbed up and sat down beside him and he dodged as if she had struck at him. "Now stop yo' foolishness an' drive on, Jasper. An' I'll jest bet anythin' that these steers run right off'n the bluff inter the creek. I jest know it."
"Oh, not with a preacher an' all these good-lookin' women," replied Jasper. "Whoa hawr, come here, Buck. Come here, Bright."
The old wagon creaked, groaned, shuddered and away they went down the hill. Lou and Mrs. Mayfield "bursting into song," Jim and Tom laughing. The dawn had been red and the early morning was still pink, with here and there a mist-veil floating up from the creek. In the air were sudden joys, the indescribable and indefinable glees of a lightsome day, the very childhood of time; and back to the north the migratory bird was singing his way, mimicked and laughed at by the native mocking songster, jongleur of the feathered world. In all this blythe land it did not seem that there was an ache or a pain, of the body or of the heart; the light, the air, the music, all combined to form a wordless sermon on the mount.
"Mr. Reverend, you are silent again," said Mrs. Mayfield, and the preacher replied: "I didn't know that, ma'm. I thought I was singing."
"I'm not singin'," Margaret spoke up, grasping Jasper's arm. "I haven't been so jolted since the mules ran away with me."
"Margaret," said Jasper, "you'd be jolted in the garden of Eden. Jolted out, I gad," he roared.
"I wouldn't, no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Lou, air you shore you put everything in the basket."