As the pair reached the steps of the back porch the convict caught a glimpse of a gingham skirt within, and its stiff flounce as it vanished behind the half-closed door-shutter suddenly flung an aspect of seriousness into his countenance. He paused, his foot on the lowest step, and peered into the sitting-room. Seeing it empty, he smiled.
“I ’ll go in thar an’ take a cheer. Tell ’er I want to see ‘er.”
His air of returning self-confidence provoked a faint laugh from his well-wisher.
“Yo’ ‘re a case,” she said, nodding her consent to his request. “You are different frum ‘most anybody else. Somehow I can’t think about you ever havin’ been jailed fer hoss-stealin’.”
“It all depends on a body’s feelin’s,” the convict returned. “Down thar in the penitentiary we had a little gang of us that knowed we wuz innocent of wrong intentions, an’ we kinder flocked together. All the rest sorter looked up to us an’ believed we wuz all right. It was a comfort. I ‘ll step in an’ git it over.”
He walked as erectly as an Indian up the steps and into the sitting-room. To his surprise Mrs. Wakeman started to enter the room from the adjoining kitchen, and seeing him, turned and began to beat a hasty retreat.
“Hold on thar, Marty,” he called out, in the old tone which had formerly made strangers suppose that the farm and all pertaining to it had been his when he married her.
She paused in the doorway, white and sullen.
“Ain’t you a-goin’ to tell a feller howdy an’ shake hands?” he asked, with considerable self-possession.
“What ’ud I do that fur?”