"What can't last long?" she asked, timidly. He looked into her eyes and smiled. "Nothin'," he answered, "nothin' caynt. Nothin' don't--an' you're young." And he was so far moved by his secret thought that he smoothed her hair from her forehead the wrong way again with a light touch, before he let her go. CHAPTER X. THE GREAT WORLD. The next morning he went to the Springs. "I'll go an' settle up and bring ye your trunk an' things," he said. "Mebbe I mayn't git back till to-morrer, so don't ye be oneasy. Ef I feel tired when I git thar, I'll stay overnight." She did not think it likely he would stay. She had never known him to remain away from home during a night unless he had been compelled to do so by business. He had always been too childishly fond of his home to be happy away from it. He liked the routine he had been used to through forty years, the rising at daylight, the regular common duties he assumed as his share, his own seat on the hearth or porch and at table. "Folks may be clever enough," he used to say. "They air clever, as a rule--but it don't come nat'ral to be away. Thar aint nothin' like home an' home ways." But he did not return that night, or even the next morning. It was dusk the next evening before Louisiana heard the buggy wheels on the road. She had been sitting on the porch and rose to greet him when he drove up and descended from his conveyence rather stiffly. "Ye wasn't oneasy, was ye?" he asked. "No," she answered; "only it seemed strange to know you were away." "I haint done it but three times since me an' Ianthy was married," he said. "Two o' them times was Conference to Barnsville, an' one was when Marcelly died." When he mounted the porch steps he looked up at her with a smile on his weather-beaten face. "Was ye lonesome?" he asked. "I bet ye was." "A little," she replied. "Not very." She gave him his chair against the wooden pillar, and watched him as he tilted back and balanced himself on its back legs. She saw something new and disturbed in his face and manner. It was as if the bit of outside life he had seen had left temporary traces upon him. She wondered very much how it had impressed him and what he was thinking about. And after a short time he told her. "Ye must be lonesome," he said, "arter stayin' down thar. It's nat'ral. A body don't know until they see it theirselves. It's gay thar. Lord, yes! it's gay, an' what suits young folks is to be gay." "Some of the people who were there did not think it was gay," Louisiana said, a little listlessly. "They were used to gayer places and they often called it dull, but it seemed very gay to me."