“Well, no, I didn't, Squire, that's a fact. She woke me up. I just crep' in quiet and felt out the soft side of a puncheon for a nap, and the firs' thing I know was Sally havin' me by the shoulder, and wantun' to know about gittun' that corn groun' for breakfas'. My! I don't know what she'll say, when I do git back.” Reverdy laughed a fearful pleasure, but his gaiety was clouded by a shadow projected from the cabin door.
“Well, I mought 'a' knowed it!” a voice at once fond and threatening called to Reverdy's quailing figure. The owner of the voice was a young woman unkempt as to the pale hair which escaped from the knot at her neck, and stuck out there and dangled about her face in spite of the attempts made to gather it under the control of the high horn comb holding its main strands together. The lankness of her long figure showed in the calico wrapper which seemed her sole garment; and her large features were respectively lank in their way, nose and chin and high cheek bones; her eyes wabbled in their sockets with the sort of inquiring laughter that spread her wide, loose mouth. She was barefooted, like Reverdy, on whom her eyes rested with a sort of burlesque menace, so that she could not turn them to Mrs. Braile in the attention which manners required of her, even when she added, “I just 'spicioned that he'd 'a' turned in here, soon's I smelt your breakfas', Mrs. Braile; and the dear knows whether I blame him so much, nuther.”
“Then you'd better draw up too, Sally,” Mrs. Braile said, without troubling herself to rise from her own chair in glancing toward another for Mrs. Reverdy.
“Oh, no, I couldn't, Mrs. Braile. I on'y just meant how nice it smelt. I got me somepin at home before I left, and I ain't a bit hungry.”
“Well, then, you eat breakfast for me; I'm hungry,” the Squire said. “Sit down! You couldn't get Abel away now, not if you went on an hour. Don't separate families!”
“Well, just as you say, Squire,” Mrs. Reverdy snickered, and she submitted to pull up the chair which Mrs. Braile's glance had suggested. “It beats all what a excitement there is in this town about the goun's on at the camp-meetun', last night. If I've heard it from one I've heard it from a dozen. I s'pose Abel's tol' you?”—she addressed herself impartially to Mrs. Braile across the table and to the Squire tilted against the wall in his chair, smoking behind his wife.
“Not a word,” the Squire said, and his wife did not trouble herself to protest; Reverdy opened his mouth in a soundless laugh at the Squire's humor, and then filled it with bacon and corn-pone, and ducked his head in silence over his plate. “What goings on?”
“Why, that man that came in while Elder Grove was snatchun' the brands from the burnun', and snorted like a horse—But I know Abel's tol' you! It's just like one of your jokes, Squire Braile; ain't it, Mrs. Braile?” Sally referred herself to one and the other.
“You won't get either of us to say, Sally,” Mrs. Braile let the Squire answer for both. “You'd better go on. I couldn't hear too often about a man that snorted like a horse, if Abel did tell. What did the horses hitched back of the tents think about it? Any of 'em try to shout like a man?”
“Well, you may laugh, Squire Braile,” Sally said with a toss of her head for the dignity she failed of. She slumped forward with a laugh, and when she lifted her head she said through the victual that filled her mouth, “I dunno what the horses thought, but the folks believe it was a apostle, or somepin.”