John turned and stared toward the house. It was as if he were trying to keep her from seeing the fierce expression he knew had clutched his face. Tilly leaned closer to him. Her shoulder touched his. She sat waiting for him to turn his head toward her again. Presently he looked at her, his honest eyes holding a famished expression.
"What is there strange about Joel going?" she asked, softly and all but propitiatingly.
"Nothing strange about it—just the reverse," he sighed. "I've heard that he has been loving you ever since he was a little boy, and that he comes to see you every chance he gets. I've heard that your father doesn't like him. I see—his cousin has got this party up so you and he can—"
Tilly sprang to her feet. John kept his seat, unaware that even rural courtesy demanded that he rise when she did. But Tilly was no stickler for conventions. She was a working-girl; he was a laborer, and there was something to be fathomed in the man before her which lurked deep within him. She was angry, or perhaps only impatient, but the mood passed as if melting into the moonlight which laved her dainty form like some supernal fluid.
"What you said is not kind or just," she objected, sweetly. "You intimate that I'd meet Joel somewhere against my father's wishes. I would not do so. I would not disobey my father or do anything on the sly that he would oppose."
In dumb, almost stupid alarm John sat staring up at her. He quaked under the sudden realization that he had offended her, and yet he had never apologized to any one in his life. The fine sense of that sort of restitution belonged to social paths John Trott had never traversed. "Excuse me," he might have said, as he had said at the gate, but somehow under her bent gaze he found himself unable to utter a word. It may have been the sheer blank look in his eyes, or the helpless twitching of his lips, that decided her, for she suddenly sat down by him again and leaned forward till their eyes met.
"You did not mean to say that I'd do anything underhand, I'm sure," she faltered. "I'm sure of it now."
"Oh no," he slowly shook his head and seemed to swallow an emotional contraction in his throat. "I didn't mean any harm, but—but he will be there, you say? He'll be there?"
"Yes, yes, of course," Tilly responded. "I suppose he will bring Martha Jane. He usually does. But what of that?"
"He'll want to talk to you, I suppose?" John went on, his nether lip hanging limp, his gaze steady.