"Wait till he passes," he said. "Don't go yet—not just yet!"
"I ought not to be here talking to you after dark," she mildly protested. There was a pause, during which the eyes of both were on the horseman. "Why," she cried, "it is Mr. Wrinkle!"
And so it was. The old man reined in his sweating mount, and, throwing a stiff leg over the animal's rump, he stood down beside them.
"Howdy do?" he greeted them. "I've just started to yore house, Alf. I'm totin' a big piece o' news. I'm late. I had to stop an' tell it to a hundred, at least, on the way. You mought guess all day and all night an' never once hit it. Alf, we've had an increase in the family—but hold on, hold on! it hain't that—it hain't another one o' my baby jokes. I know better 'n to try a second dose on you out o' the same bottle. Alf, Dick Wrinkle hain't dead."
"Not dead?" Henley and Dixie repeated the words in the same breath as they tensely leaned forward.
"No, an' that ain't the only thing to be reckoned with. He's over at home now, stouter and in better trim than he ever was in his life. He appeared to me in the orchard whar we was packin' peaches, an' I was plumb flabbergasted. It seems that he would have reported sooner if he had been fully at hisself. He wasn't actually killed in that tornado, but blowed off somers an' got a hit in the skull and was fixed so that his remembrance played tricks on him. At one time he imagined he was a cook for some cowboys, and a lot more fool antics. He would have been that way yet—I mean in his crazy fix—but he says a pony throwed 'im an' it all come back. You'll have to get him to tell you about it. I've got it all mixed up."
Henley's wide-staring eyes sought Dixie's face. She was pale, still, and mute.
"Well, I've got to be going," she said, in a quavering voice to old Jason. "I haven't had a chance, Mr. Wrinkle, to ask you how Mrs. Henley likes it over there. I hope your wife is well. They say the water is freestone on that side of the mountain, and that is better for the health than our hard limestone. You must tell them both that we all miss them every day."
"Hold on! hold on!" Wrinkle said. "You'd better hear the straight o' this thing. You'll wish you did, for folks will have it all lopsided by to-morrow, an' I'll give you dead cold facts."
"But I've got my cow to milk," Dixie faltered, her color coming back, "and it's growing late."