“I know,” Paul laughed softly and appealingly, “they think blood, and nothing but blood, can wash out a difference like ours; but there is a better way, Jeff, and that is through good-will. We've been enemies long enough. I want to be your friend. You've taken care of my mother and aunt all these years, and I am genuinely grateful for it.”
Warren turned his shattered countenance aside. “I didn't look for you to be this way at all—at all,” he faltered, huskily. “I reckon when I heard you was back here I got mad because you was makin' your way up so fast, and I've been steadily goin' down. The devil was in me, an' I thought he was in you, too. Lord, I never dreamt that you'd walk up like this to a—a—feller that—” Warren waved a dejected hand toward the cabin—“that had fetched your mammy to a pig-pen of a shack right in the neighborhood whar you are thought so much of.”
“A man doesn't deserve to be well thought of, Jeff, who considers himself better in any way than a less fortunate fellow-being. If you could really understand me you'd see that I actually think more of you than if you were well-to-do.”
“Oh, come off!” Warren sharply deprecated. “That's beyond reason. I used to be proud. In fact, I reckon that's what drawed me so much to your mother. I pitied her because your daddy made so little headway, but look at me now. Lord, Lord, jest look! Why, he was a king beside me. I've plumb lost my grip.”
“I see—I know what you mean,” Paul said, sympathetically, “but you are going to get it back, Jeff, and I'm going to do all I can to help. Is my mother in the house?”
“No; the calf got to the cow, an' the two wandered off somewhar. Your ma is down in the meadow close to the swamp tryin' to find 'em.”
“And my aunt?”
“Oh, Mandy—why, you see”—Jeff appeared to be embarrassed anew—“you see, Mrs. Tobe Williams, who lives over in town, driv' by this evenin' about an hour by sun, and—and said she'd had so much trouble gettin' a woman to—to cook for her big family o' children that, if Mandy wouldn't mind helpin' her out in a pinch, she would pay well for it. I put my foot down ag'in it, but Mandy wouldn't listen to reason, an' got in the buggy and went. It seemed to me that was my last straw. If killin' myself would aid anybody the least bit I'd gladly—”
Warren's voice broke, and he stood quivering from head to foot in the effort to control his emotion. Paul advanced and extended his hand. “We must be friends, Jeff,” he said, with feeling. “Between us, we can make both of them happy.”
“Between us! You say—”