"Well, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind." He smiled as he continued, "You know they say women do change sometimes."
She looked down at him sadly. "Yes, I know they do, but some way I don't."
There was a long pause while Watts screwed up his courage to say, "Still kind of thinking about that preacher?"
The woman had no animation in her voice as she replied, "You know that by now—without asking."
The man sat down on the step, and she sat on a lower step. He was silent for a time. Then he said, "Funny, ain't it?" She knew she was not to reply; for in a dozen years she had learned the man's moods. In a minute, during which he looked into his hat absent-mindedly, he went on: "As far as I've been able to make it out, love's a kind of a grand-right-and-left. I give my right hand to you, and you give yours to the preacher, and he gives his to some other girl, and she gives hers to some one else, like as not, who gives his to some one else, and the fiddle and the horn and the piano and the bass fid screech and toot and howl, and away we go and sigh under our breaths and break our hearts and swing our partners, and it's everybody dance." He looked up at her and smiled at his fancy. For he was a poet and thought his remarks had some artistic value.
She smiled back at him, and he leaned on his elbows and looked up at her as he said quietly: "I'd like awful well, Nellie—awful well if you'd be my partner for the rest of this dance. It's lonesome down there in the shop."
The woman patted his hand, and they sat quietly for a while and then she said, "Maybe sometime, Watts, but not to-night."
He got up, and stood for a moment beside her on the walk. "Well," he said at length, "I suppose I must be moving along—as the wandering Jew said." He smiled and their eyes met in the moonlight. Watts dropped his instantly, and exclaimed, "You're a terrible handsome girl, Nellie—? did you know it?" He repeated it and added, "And the Lord knows I love you, Nellie, and I've said it a thousand times." He found her hand again, and said as he put on his hat, "Well, good-by, Nellie—good-by—if you call that gone." His handclasp tightened and hers responded, and then he dropped her hand and turned away.
The woman felt a desire to scream; she never knew how she choked her desire. But she rushed after him and caught him tightly and sobbed, "Oh, Watts—Watts—Watts McHurdie—are you never going to have any more snap in you than that?"
As he kicked away the earth from under him, Watts McHurdie saw the light in a window of the Culpepper home, and when he came down to earth again five minutes later, he said, "Well, I was just a-thinking how nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of tell them the news!"