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It's got you beat. Well," he added, as he picked up the letter, "I'll just keep you right on guessing. Where's yours?" The girl laughed merrily. "Had mine. I don't guess any right-acting girl would sit easy in the saddle twelve miles without reading her mail. Say " she paused. The smile had died out of her eyes. Jeff's expression had abruptly changed.
I had brought a little food in my wallet, according to Uncle Jeff's advice before we left the house, and this I believe was the means of saving my life. Although it was dry, it gave me some strength. I remained in a sort of stupor, scarcely conscious of what had occurred; and some hours, I suspect, went by, before I attempted to resume my journey.
Hand and wrist were burnt brown by the sun, but above, the flesh was white and soft. Just below the elbow flamed the red and purple marks left by Jeff's fingers. "The shoulder's a sight worse than that," said Bud sulkily. Jeff displayed honest concern. "Pore little Bud," said he, patting the boy's hand which lay in his own. "It is lucky fer me Miss Sadie ain't round.
As he dropped he tossed his bag of coins to the floor. It fell with a melodious jingling that was immediately drowned by Jeff's groans; the saddle was torture to him, and now he was aching in every joint of his enormous body. "A nice haul nothin' to kick about," was Jeff's opinion. "But Caesar's ghost what a ride! The chief makes this thing too hard on a gent that likes to go easy, Andy."
It is true that this misgiving attacked them mostly in the mass; singly, they were little or not at all troubled by it, and they severally behaved in an unprincipled indifference to it. Mrs. Durgin had the courage of her own purposes, but she had the fear of Jeff's.
But Jeff only spends a short time occasionally in Scotland; most of his leave is generally passed with his father. The deep strong affection between father and son seems to become a closer bond as the years rolls on. They speak sometimes of the dead mother, and even now Jeff's voice hushes and his steady eyes are misty at the mention of her name or the recalling of her words.
The will of Jeff's mother relaxed its grip upon the purpose so long held, as if the mere strain of the tenacity had wearied and weakened it. When it finally appeared that her ambition for her son was not his ambition for himself and would never be, she abandoned it.
She was rather quiet and absorbed and not especially alive to Jeff's coming in. No quick glance questioned him about the state of things as he had left them. But after supper she lingered behind the others and asked him directly: "Couldn't we go out somewhere and talk?" "Yes," said he. "We could walk down to the river." They started at once, and Anne, seeing them go, sighed deeply.
In the outing dress he wore at home he was always effective, but there was something in Jeff's figure which did not lend itself to more formal fashion; something of herculean proportion which would have marked him of a classic beauty perhaps if he had not been in clothes at all, or of a yeomanly vigor and force if he had been clad for work, but which seemed to threaten the more worldly conceptions of the tailor with danger.
This fact sat lightly on Jeff's mind, however, as he remembered the box at the foot of the persimmon-tree; and he stalked into the detached kitchen, where a dusky assemblage were to indulge in a shuffle, with the air of one who intends that his superiority shall be recognized at once. "Law sakes, Jeff!" said Mandy, his hitherto ebon flame, "yer comes in like a turkey gobbler. Doesn't yer know me?"
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