The young fellow sat, as was his wont in his frequent visits, on the step of the porch, his head, with its tousled curls and its big hat, leaning back against the post and the thinning yellow vines. His expression was slightly sullen, and implied a despondent appeal, although his muscles asserted a cheerful habit, altogether independent of his mind and heart, and he mechanically laid a clasp-knife upon one closed fist, and with a dextrous twist of the wrist flung it to the ground, piercing the moist earth with its point, after the manner of the expert mumble-the-peg player. Now and then he looked up at Marcella, who sat spinning, spinning, ceaselessly at her little flax-wheel, until it seemed to him—the whir ringing in his ears, the sight of the wheel whirling until it was only a dazzling spokeless circle—that they were his heartstrings which she was thus drawing out into these attenuated threads, and that there would not be enough hope, or courage, or any of the essential endowments left for him to live upon by the time she had wound these intimate fibres into balls. So forlorn was this “frequent visitor.” “Ye don’t never notice nobody nor nuthin’, nowadays,” he said, a trifle hampered in his complaint by the presence of the wiry Isabel, who sat at the other end of the step, and of his own dog, who looked, as he took up his position between the two, intelligent enough to understand the conversation, and independent enough to repeat it. “Got nuthin’ ter say ter nobody, nor nuthin’.” He meant himself by this negative description, and the sharp-eyed Isabel understood as much. Despite her precocity she had the lamentable lack of tact characteristic of her age, and her mind was a blank as to matters amatory. She intended to be very agreeable when she said, with a toss of her tangled hair, “Marcelly air a-gittin’ too old fur ye an’ me, Andy; she’s jes’ gittin’ mighty settled an’ old.” A quick expression of apprehension, even dismay, flitted across his face. “What air ye a-talkin’ ’bout, Is’bel?” he cried, in a loud, reprehensive voice. “I be four year older ’n Marcelly. ‘Gittin’ too old fur ye an’ me’!” he mimicked ungraciously. “Puttin’ we-uns tergether, ez ef _we-uns_ war of an age, whenst I be old enough ter be yer gran’dad, chile!” He made another active throw with the knife, holding one ear with one hand, and flinging the blade from the other ear with a marked dexterity. When he glanced up Isabel had risen, and waited to catch his eye. “I’m goin’ in the house,” she remarked, with sour dignity. “I be ’feard ye mought bite me.” He would have been glad of the riddance had it been vouchsafed, but it was an empty threat, or rather promise, for the little girl still lingered, leaning against a post of the porch; nevertheless, it served him for another ground of complaint.