"Because the others haven't theirs yet," she answered.
"Oh, I see," he muttered, chagrined in spite of his happiness. "I'll never get on to your ways. I've been brought up different. I've worked hard since I was a boy—I— I—" But he could not go farther. Why should he allude to his sordid home life when it was a thing which he now so utterly despised? How could he speak of his mother, who was so widely and strangely different from the women Tilly knew? No, he would let those things rest.
Various young men had served all the ladies on the veranda when Joel came out with a plate and looked about as if trying to find some lady who had been overlooked. Finding no one, he brought it to John.
"You take it, Mr. Trott," he said, suavely, and yet with a touch of irrepressible dejection in his tone.
John stared in stupid bewilderment and then jerked out, "Keep it yourself." It was just such a well-meant reply as he might have made to one of his workmen who was offering him a cigar, and yet it quite frustrated Joel, who stood awkwardly waiting, the plate still timidly extended.
"Oh no! I'm going right back," Joel said. "I can't eat now, thank you. We are just beginning to help the men."
"Well, you can't wait on me," John blurted out. The situation was becoming tense and awkward, when Tilly half playfully reached out, took the plate, and gave it to John.
"Take it," she said, firmly. "Joel is in a hurry. The others are waiting."
John obeyed, but failed to thank Eperson. He was vaguely conscious that Tilly was smoothly performing the duty for him and that Joel was bowing himself away. Then they sat in silence. Others near by were boisterously laughing, beating time with their feet and singing with the band, but neither Tilly nor John had aught to say. It was as if the subject which was at once burning and soothing their souls was too vast and sacred to be touched upon in the neighborhood of others less profoundly stirred.
"Give me your plate. I'll take it in," John heard a young farmer saying to the girl he sat with. "You don't want to hold it all night. We'll be dancing again in a minute."