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It was hard on him that the boy's plan for absence should pile up on Sally Madeira's plan, but he could understand that it would be harder on the boy to stay in the Tigmores with the inspiration of the Tigmores hushed and gone. "Not thinking of going to Italy yet, Piney?" It had come to be an accepted joke with them, that penchant of Piney's for Italy.
When he reached it at last, Steering was quite speechless, but, with the boy's help, scrambled into the skiff, where he slipped like water to the bottom, the fight back being altogether Piney's. When Steering could talk at all, he gasped out how it had happened.
Madeira went to the garden and stretched out on a bench, the smile that he had given Piney staying on his face, crinkling in automatically with the grievous strain that was about his eyes and mouth in these days. After a little he closed his eyes softly, enjoyingly. From the library came the carolling sweetness of Piney's tenor.
She went off toward the house then, a fragrant shower of orchard blossoms falling upon her and shutting her away from the boy's eyes as she went. Sally Madeira crept to the door of her father's study and listened. In the pallid light that was stealing up to her from Piney's story her face was shadowy, with hurtful doubt, ashamed fear, and she steadied herself by the wall with hands that shook.
His eyes looked misty, with a little spark of high light cutting bravely through. He would not finish his sentence. "Did Unc' Bernique say whend he's comin' back to Canaan?" he asked moodily. "No, he didn't, though I urged him to. That's a fine old man, Piney." Piney's eyes softened beautifully. "Takes mighty good keer of me," he said. "Is he kin to you?" "I d'n know abaout that.
"Miss Sally, he set his jaw an' he ketched Unc' Bernique by the arm an' helt him an' made him swear like this, 'You by your love for Piney's young mother, I by my love for Salome Madeira, that never, s'help us God, will you or I carry word of this to Crittenton Madeira and his daughter Salome' sumpin like that, Miss Sally. I don' adzackly remember the words."
Reaching their horses in the glade, Steering and Piney mounted and started up the river road. "Can't you come with us for the rest of the week, son?" asked Bruce, as they journeyed. "Nope. Goin' trampin' by myse'f." It was Piney's habit to disappear for days, gipsy that he was. Perhaps the habit was growing upon him a little of late.
Here and now, you shall swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!" The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks.
As he neared the top, he lifted his head and saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique. "Hurry! For God's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony that danced like a dervish.
"Well, d'you think," went on Piney, jerking his spear of grass viciously, "d'you think that a man cand fall in love with a lady rat off, just knowin' her a few weeks?" This was one of Piney's ways of manifesting the jealousy that disquieted him, slurring covertly, and with his lips flickering peculiarly, at Steering's brief acquaintance with Miss Madeira.
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