“Oh!” said Bart again, but quite in another tone, quite cheerfully. “That’s it, is ’t, Laviny? Well, that’s all right. But I’ll be hanged if you didn’t take my breath away for a minute. I thought you meant—Laviny!”—a sudden seriousness came into his tone and look—“I guess you don’t know how much I think o’ you. My heart’s just _set_ on you, my girl—my whole life’s wrapped up in you.” He paused, but Lavinia did not speak or look at him, and he added, very slowly and thoughtfully—“I reckon it ’u’d just about kill me, ’f anything happened to you.” “I guess nothin’ ’s a-goin’ to happen.” She dropped one potato into a pan of cold water and took up another. “No, I guess not.” He took on a lighter tone. “But I’ll tell you what, Laviny! If that’s all, he ain’t comp’ny at all; so you can just tell him I’m a-goin’, too.” He came closer and laid a large but very gentle hand on her shoulder. “You might even tell him I’ve got a right to go, Laviny.” The girl shrank, and glanced nervously at the door. “I wouldn’t like to do that, Bart. After his arrangin’ to go, an’ a-hirin’ the skiff hisself. _I_ don’t know but what he’s got somebody else to go along of us.” “Why, does he ever?” “Well, I don’t recollect that he ever has; but then he might of, this time, I say, for all I know.” There was another silence. Then the big hand patted the girl’s shoulder affectionately and the honest eyes bent on her the look of patient tenderness that Diller had considered pathetic. “All right, Laviny; you go along of him, just by yourself, an’ I’ll stop home with your paw an’ your maw. I want you to know, my girl, that I trust you, an’ believe every word you say to me. I ain’t even thought o’ much else besides you ever sence I saw you first time at the liberry sociable, an’ I won’t ever think o’ much else, I don’t care what happens. Bein’ afraid to trust a body ’s a poor way to show how much you think about ’em, is my religion; so you go an’ have a good time, an’ don’t you worry about me.” He tucked one of her runaway curls behind her ear awkwardly. “I’ll slip down to the liv’ry stable now, an’ tell ’em about the rig.” “All right,” said Lavinia. Her mother came in one door, after a precautionary scraping of her feet and an alarming paroxysm of coughing, and looked rather disappointed to see Bart going out at the other, and to realize that her modest warnings had been thrown away. “Well, ’f I _ever_!” she exclaimed. “Laviny Vaiden, whatever makes you _look_ so? You look just ’s if you’d seen a spook! You’re a kind o’ yellow-gray—just like you had the ja’ndice! What _ails_ you?” “I got a headache,” said the girl; and then, somehow, the pan slid down off her lap, and the potatoes and the parings went rolling and sprawling all over the floor; Lavinia’s head went down suddenly on the table, and she was sobbing bitterly.