They were all on the veranda now and Joel stood facing his rival, a look of wondering respect in his shrinking gaze.
"Oh, Joel!" a voice was heard, and Sally Teasdale approached. "We need you. Mother is going to serve the refreshments and all the men who know the ins and outs of our kitchen are helping wait on the crowd. Will you come? Father is already unable to walk steady."
CHAPTER XIV
Joel blandly and gallantly complied. His sister, now thrown with John and Tilly after the others left, looked slightly embarrassed, and, saying that she, too, would help serve the supper, she moved away. This threw John and Tilly together again. Some couples had seated themselves in chairs against the wall, and, as there were vacancies, they sat down also. The negroes, to the accompaniment of guitars, began singing old plantation melodies. The moon, higher in the heavens now, shed a glorious sheen over the still landscape. John was too full of adoration and joy to utter a word. Tilly seemed to sense his mood to its depths and to blend a mood of like nature with it.
"I love you—I love you!" John's soul seemed to whisper, but his tongue remained an inactive lump in his mouth.
"I know—I understand," Tilly's soul seemed to be saying in the same inaudible way. He smelled the perfume of the geranium leaves on his coat, and his big red fingers raised them to his nostrils. He told himself that it was a silly, womanish act, but what did he care? Tilly's fingers had pinned them there, the little fingers he longed to caress.
Joel served her first. He came past other girls and brought Tilly a plate containing cake and a glass of sillibub and hastened away after she had sweetly thanked him.
Tilly held the plate in her lap, idly toying with the spoon.
"Why don't you eat it?" John asked.