"I am much obliged," Cavanaugh stammered. "I can't make a speech or I'd tell you how tickled I am by your compliment, and my young friend on my right is, too. We are combining business and pleasure on this jaunt and are having a fine time." John was gloomily unconscious of the fact that he, too, was expected to say something. Seeing Cavanaugh sit down, he did likewise. He was watching Eperson and Tilly, who at one of the long tables near by sat facing him. Eperson was bending eagerly toward her, smiling and saying something in her ear. Tilly seemed to be listening, for she was smiling also. Farther down the same table sat her father and mother. Whaley had a plate heaped high with the meat and its accompanying peppery relish, and was eating voraciously. Mrs. Whaley was chatting with a woman at her side and scarcely eating at all. The brass band was playing, there was a great clatter of knives and forks and tin cider-cups. John was in one of his surliest moods. He was really hungry enough to have enjoyed the feast, but his thoughts kept him from doing so. Presently he managed to slip away from the table, and found himself alone. He wandered aimlessly about the foundation of the new building, trying to make himself believe that he was inspecting the work already done. The band had ceased playing. The crowd of white citizens was thinning out, and the negroes were falling into the vacant places at the tables. John saw Cavanaugh and the elder Whaleys trudging homeward. Where was Tilly? he wondered. Then he saw Eperson driving a poor horse drawing a ramshackle buggy around from the public hitching-rack. Tilly stood waiting for him alone on the edge of the sidewalk. Eperson got out, helped her into the seat, and then got in beside her and drove her homeward. John lingered about the foundations for half an hour. Then he saw Eperson returning in the buggy alone. He had to pass close to where John stood, but John refused to look up as he went by and turned into the country road. There was a vague look of placid content on the earnest face of the man which portended things John dared not think about. CHAPTER VIII The work on the new building went on apace. John was always tired when night came, but a new expectation at the end of each day had come into his hitherto uneventful life. It was not often that he saw Tilly alone, but he had come to look forward eagerly even for the mere sight of her in the evening, at the supper-table, on the veranda, or in the yard with the others. Both he and Cavanaugh immediately changed their clothing when the day's work was over, and this formality was a new and pleasant thing for the young mason. The change always made him feel more respectable. It gave him the sense of throwing off the grime and toil of the day. It was the first ordering of his life on any social plane, and it charmed him. "You are certainly a wonder," the old man remarked to him one afternoon as they were dressing in John's room.