She looked at him intently, speculatively, a sort of doubtful curiosity furtively suggested in her expression; but there was naught subtle or covert in the gaze that met hers--naught but the frankest pleasure and happiness. He did not move, as she advanced, nor offer formal greeting; he only smiled, secure, content, restful, as she came up and sat down on the end of the bench. The children, playing noisily in the back yard on the wood-pile, paused for a moment to gaze with callow interest at them; but the spectacle of "The'dosia's sweetheart" was too familiar to be of more than fleeting diversion, and they resorted once more to their pastime. Mrs. Blakely too, who with rolling-pin in her hand had turned to gaze out of the window, went back to rolling out the dough vigorously, with only the muttered comment, "Wish The'dosia didn't know how much I'd like that man fur a son-in-law, then she'd be willin' ter like him better herse'f." He was unconscious of them all, as he leaned his elbow on the projecting rails of the fence at their intersection close at hand. "Hev ye hed yer health, The'dosia?" he said. "Don't I look like it?" she replied laughingly. There was something both of cordiality and coquetry in her manner. Her large eyes narrowed as she laughed, and albeit they glittered between their closing lids, the expression was not pleasant. Levity did not become her. "Yes, ye do," he said seriously. "Ye 'pear ter be real thrivin' an' peart an' healthy." His look, his words, were charged with no sort of recognition or value of her beauty: clearly her challenge had fallen to the ground unnoticed. "He'd like me jes' ez well ef I war all pitted up with the smallpox, or ez freckled ez a tur-r-key-aig," she thought, flushing with irritation. Beauty is jealous of preeminence, and would fain have precedence even of love. She could take no sort of satisfaction in a captive that her bright eyes had not shackled. Somehow this love seemed to flout, to diminish, her attractions. It was like an accident. She could account for his subjection on no other grounds. As she sat silent, grave enough now and very beautiful, gazing askance and troubled upon him, he went on:-- "I war so oneasy an' beset lest suthin' hed happened on the mounting, whilst I war away, ter trouble you-uns or some o' yer folks. I never hed time ter study much 'bout sech in the day, but I dreamt 'bout ye in the night, an' _all night_,"--he laughed a little,--"all sort'n mixed up things. I got ter be a plumb Joseph fur readin' dreams--only I could read the same one forty diff'rent ways, an' every way made me a leetle mo' oneasy than the t'other one. I s'pose ye hev been perlite enough ter miss me a leetle," he concluded. She flashed her great eyes at him with a pretended stare of surprise. "My--no!" she exclaimed. "We-uns hev hed the comet ter keep us comp'ny--we ain't missed nobody!" He laughed a little, as at a repartee, and then went on:--