The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ go 'long into the church and get your soul saved for Heaven, Sis' Roxy. I reckon they need representatives of the Cleaverage family in both places."

      "Well, that's whar you're a-goin' – er more so," asserted the widow with dignity, as she turned her back once more on the young folks and moved away.

      Lance took the ribbon of his banjo from his neck and flung it over a blossoming azalea bush.

      "I'll hang my harp on a willer tree,

      And away to the wars again,"

      he hummed softly just above his breath.

      "I don't aim to hurt the preacher's feelings. I won't take my banjo into his church – sech doctrine as Drumright's is apt to be mighty hard on banjo strings. Don't you-all want to have a little dance after the meeting's out – on the Threshin'-floor Rock up the branch?"

      The girls looked duly horrified, all but Ola Derf, who spoke up promptly,

      "Yes – or come a-past our house. Pap don't mind a Sunday dance. You will come, won't you, Lance?" pleadingly.

      Callista Gentry did not dance. She had always, in the nature of things, belonged to the class of young people in the mountains who might be expected at any time to "profess" and join the church. The musician laughed teasingly.

      "I reckon we'd better not," he said finally. "Callista's scared. She begged me into bringing my banjo to-day (you don't any of you know the gal like I do), and now she's scared to listen to it."

      Callista barely raised her eyes at this speech, and spared to make any denial.

      "You-all that wants to dance on a Sunday better go 'long there," she said indifferently. "It's mighty near time for preaching to begin, and you've got a right smart walk over to the Derf place." Dismissing them thus coolly from her world, she addressed herself once more to pinning a bunch of ochre and crimson azaleas into the trimming of her broad hat.

      "Lance," drawled Buck Fuson, "I hear you' cuttin' timber on yo' land. Aimin' to put up a cabin – fixin' to wed?"

      The newcomer shrugged his shoulders, but made no reply.

      "When I heared it, I 'lowed Callista had named the day," persisted Fuson.

      "Have ye, Callista?" Rilly Trigg put in daringly, as neither of the principals seemed disposed to speak.

      "The names that the days have already got suits me well enough," Callista observed drily. "I don't know why I should go namin' ary one of 'em over again."

      There was a great laugh at this, of which Cleaverage appeared entirely oblivious.

      "Yes," he began quietly, when it had subsided, "I'm about to put me up a house – I like to be a-buildin' – a man might as well improve his property. There's one gal that wants me mighty bad, and has wanted me for a long while; sometimes I'm scared she'll get me. Reckon I might as well be ready."

      "Ye hear that, Callisty?" crowed little Rilly Trigg. "Ye hear that! Have ye told him adzackly the kind of house ye want? I 'low ye ort."

      "Put a little yellow side o' that red," advised Callista composedly, busying herself wholly with the hat Rilly was trimming. "There – don't you think that looks better?"

      Rilly made a face at Fuson and Cleaverage, and laughed.

      "No need to ask her which nor whether," said Lance nonchalantly. "Any place I am is bound to suit Callista. I intend that my house shall be the best in the Turkey Tracks; but if it wasn't she'd never find it out, long as I was there."

      Again there was a chorus of appreciative laughter.

      "How's that, Callista – is it so for a fact?" inquired Fuson, eager to see the game go on.

      Callista opened her beautiful eyes wide, and smiled with lazy scorn.

      "Truly, I'm suited with whatever Lance Cleaverage builds, and wherever and whenever he builds. Let it be what it may, it's nothing to me."

      "You Rilly!" called a shrill feminine voice from the direction of the church. "Bring the basket."

      "Help me with it, Buck," said Aurilla, and the two started down the slope together.

      "Now," suggested Lance, with an affectation of reluctance, "if the rest of you-all don't mind giving us the place here, I reckon Callista's got a heap that she wants to say to me, and she's ashamed to speak out before folks."

      The mad project of a Sunday dance, which nobody but Ola Derf had entertained for a moment, was thus tacitly dropped. There was a general snickering at Lance's impudent assumption. Again Callista seemed too placidly contemptuous to care to make denial. Boys got up from their lounging positions on the grass, girls shook out their skirts, and two and two the young folks began to straggle toward the gray little church.

      "You're a mighty accommodatin' somebody," observed Lance, dropping lightly on the grass at Callista's feet. "I have been told by some that you'd make a contentious wife; but looks to me like you're settin' out to be powerful easy goin'. Ain't got a word to say about how many rooms in the house, nor whar the shelves is to be, nor nothin' – eh?"

      Reckless of time or place he reached up, put a finger under her chin, and turned her face toward him, puckering his lips meditatively as though he meant to kiss her – or to whistle. He got a swift, stinging slap for his pains, and Callista faced around on the rock where she sat to put herself as far from him as might be.

      "Who said anything about wives and husbands?" she demanded. "I was talking about you building on yo' land. Hit's nothin' to me. I never expect to live in the houses you build, nor so much as set foot in 'em. When you named that girl that was tryin' to wed you, I shorely thought you must have been meanin' Ola Derf. As for me, if you heard me talkin' of the house I expected to live in, you'd hear a plenty – because I'm particular. I ain't a-going to put up with no puncheon floor in my best room. Hit's got to be boards, and planed at that. I ain't a-goin' to break my back scouring puncheons for no man."

      Lance nodded, with half closed eyes. It was plain he got her message. One guessed that the house would be made to please her, and, too, that he liked her the better for being fastidious.

      The two were apparently alone together; but neither Ola Derf nor Flenton Hands was among the young people moving away down the further slope. Lance gazed after their retreating friends and heaved a lugubrious sigh.

      "Well, looks like they've all started off and left me for you and you for me," he commented sadly.

      "Have they?" inquired Callista without interest. "They show mighty poor judgment."

      "Same sort of judgment I'm showing, settin' here talking to you, when I might as well spend my time with a good-lookin' gal," retorted Lance promptly.

      "The Lord knows you waste yo' time talking to me," Callista sent back to him with a musing, unruffled smile on her finely cut lips. "Your settin' up to me would sure be foolishness."

      "Settin' up to you?" – Lance took his knees into an embrace and looked quizzically at her as she reclined above him, milk-white and pink, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, a creature to cuddle and kiss one would have said, yet with a gall-bag under her tongue for him always. "Me settin' up to you?" He repeated the words with a bubble of apparently unsubduable amusement in his tone. "I reckon you're a-doin' the settin' up; everybody seems to understand it so. I just mentioned that the rest of the folks had left you and me alone СКАЧАТЬ