"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way in, an' that way out—huh?"
So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail.
"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey—shake yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside and the white of an eye showing.
"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently, his whip poised for another cut.
"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she caught the reins from her companion; then pulled the whip out of his hand and dropped it into the holster.
Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his eye.
"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you—all up to you, boy."
"This sure is the life—ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep.
It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry; but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of "pliers" out of the question. Here there was nothing for it but to drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels.
"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved down until it now lightly touched her waist.