He was not quite sure he understood her at first. He seemed dumfounded; then, as the light of comprehension dawned in his eyes, he looked down into her face and laughed. “Kem, Bob,” he said, turning away, “it’s time we-uns war a-travelin’.” But Bob had met a young friend of somewhat his own tastes and disposition. A lamb had strayed near where he was sitting, and the two had spent some profitable moments in gazing silently at one another with that irresistible curiosity and manifest fellow-feeling which infancy has for infancy. What they thought each of the other no one can ever say. That the scrutiny was not mutually derogatory in its results may be inferred from the fact that the lamb leaped suddenly to one side on its slender, knobby little legs, with a sort of aquiline alacrity, and kicked up some very frolicsome heels. Whereupon Bob mitigated the intensity of his stare, and began to run about nimbly with his short skirts flying, his round body very straight, his agility seeming necessarily somewhat knock-kneed in order to give free play to such redundant calves. He showed a very merry pair of heels, that served him as well as the lamb’s two pairs, and neither of the blithe young things took the smallest notice of Jepson’s summons. Marcella gave them no heed. She had never been so deeply wounded as by Jepson’s evident surprise, his laugh, disclaiming the motive to please her. Always he had seemed to her secretly subservient to her power, however he might seek to assert his own independence. She was humiliated that she should have suggested her influence and received a renunciation rather than a protestation. It was as if he had told her that he did not love her so much as she thought—not so blindly, so idolatrously. She had over-flattered herself; her vanity had palpably convicted her. Strangely enough she was not angry. Every emotion was absorbed in the idea that he did not love her as she had thought he did—he had laughed at the supreme power which she assumed to wield over him. She glanced up at him aslant under her long lashes. He was not looking at her. He had shouldered his rifle and was advancing upon the swiftly revolving Bob and his nimble four-footed acquaintance. “Kem on, bubby. Kem on, Bob. We-uns mus’ go home now.” But the gleeful Bob, with distended ruddy cheeks, and two rows of snaggled white teeth, and gleaming eyes almost eclipsed in rolls of fat, continued his blithe circuit, finding a new joy in flapping his arms, in which he had an advantage over the lamb, who had no arms to flap, and who often paused with meditative lowered head to gaze at these gyrations. “Kem on, Bob—or I’ll make ye! Ye’ll repent it, sir! Kem on!” And once more Jepson approached the elusively whisking Bob. “Kem on! Like a good boy.” He resorted to entreaty. But Bob evidently disbelieved in retribution from this source, and was hard-hearted enough to disregard softer suasion.