"Oh, it has a lot more soul and story than the Hudson places," she acquiesced at once. Sometimes she could feel that desire of his to give her as good as the best palpitate like a pulse through his words.
"Well, anyhow, Lord knows it's mighty different from what I began with, Sally. Why, Honey, in my boy-days living on a farm in Missouri was mighty much like living on the fringes of hellen-blazes. Br-r-rt!" He clamped and unclamped his big hand, watching the strong muscle-play in it. "I can feel my fingers burn to this day where the frozen fodder sawed and rasped 'em in winter and the hot plough-handles bit and blistered 'em in summer. And then, afterwards, those old St. Louis days meant hard pulling, too, of another kind. From grocery clerk, to dry-goods clerk, to old Peele's real estate office, it was pull, pull, if not over one thing, over another. Takes a thundering lot of pulling to pull out in this world, Sally." All in a minute his voice sounded perplexed and resentful.
"Well, you did it, didn't you? You pulled out. I'm proud of you. I like the way you did it."
"Do you, Pet? Do you like me?" he queried with a peculiar anxiety.
"Yes, sir, I do."
Black Chloe, who had been making slow trips between kitchen and dining-room for some minutes, stopped now to say, in a sort of Arabian Nights measure, "Ef you raddy fuh yo' brekfus, yo' brekfus raddy fuh you."
"Better than anybody?" pursued Madeira, but his daughter was drawing him to the table, and he did not notice that her only answer was a quivering laugh.
They sat down to a breakfast-table whose delightful appearance was due to that sense of colour in Sally Madeira's temperament. Both ate some fruit, because it was juicy and went down easily, and both looked at their coffee-cups.
"Why don't you eat your breakfast, Daddy?"
"Why don't you?" Perhaps if he had waited for her to tell him, her gladness would have sent her story bubbling to her lips, but he did not wait. "I'm bothered, Honey, that's why I can't eat."