Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back toward the barn.
"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good."
CHAPTER XXVIII. The Coming of the Mother.
Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady Frances Ware's train.
For half a mile, the road led past Sir William's fields, in which the wheat was now its full ripe harvest yellow. Around one of these fields, a binder hummed, and the shirt-sleeved man on the seat of it flung a kiss to Daisy from afar. That shirt-sleeved man was Sir William Ware, Baronet. The man who was stooking behind the binder also lifted his hand to his lips, though in his case the salute was not a kiss but a friendly hail; for the stooker was he who had been yodling, artificial, "city-bug"-imitating Dexie Coleman. He had callouses on his palms now that it would be hard to get through with a chisel, and on each arm a biceps that would burst an iron ring.
Daisy herself was changed in some indefinable way. Her mouth was softened, her eyes had become forward-looking and dreamy, her color more delicate. Her attitude was not now tensed, aggressive, a-jump with schoolgirlish spirit; but gentle, relaxed, restful. One could not on this day imagine her with the horsewhip of punishment in her hand.
There were no pools on the Toddburn highway to impede this August drive. The breath of autumn was soft in the air, and the summer's work of the sun was over. The ruts of the trail were cushioned with soft dust, the uplands ripe green, the trees full-sapped and thriving, every twig deciduously ready for the going of the leaves. The prairie plants had long ago sent the last of their pollen abroad by wind and voyaging bee. There were red berries on the rose-bushes, and white on the wolf-willow. The house of the world was swept and garnished for the fall.