"Mind now," she said, "not to get your thoughts tangled up with no
young gals you may see there. One's jest come in this morning from the
level land. Ricollect, they hain't for sech as you. Keep your mind
fixed stiddy on what you're a-going atter, and don't get witched off by
no young face with naught behind hit."
* * * * *
When they arrived at the tents, the heifer was received with warm
appreciation by two of the women, whom Jeems judged to be the heads,
though they were astonishingly fair and rosy and young and neatly
dressed, to have reached the ancient age of twenty-eight. From a
safe distance in the background, Jeems inspected each, narrowly and
appraisingly. When the heifer had been anchored to a tree, one of the
women returned to a group of old people she appeared to be teaching,
near by, and the other settled down to letter-writing under a more
distant tree. Fult had hurried up-hill, and Jeems slowly followed,
gazing with solemn, owlish eyes upon all the strange things and people
he saw.
The lowest tents were deserted, but in the larger, gayly decorated one
farther up, two or three dozen mothers, with babies, were gathered, and
the nurse was giving a talk on the care of infants, using one in her
demonstration. She was giving it a warm bath when Jeems peered into the
tent. He was at once transfixed.
"That air woman knows how to handle a young-un," he said to himself,
after watching the proceedings for some time, "and is a good looker,
too."
No mother present could have been more appreciative of the deft ways of
the nurse than was Jeems, out of the fullness of his own experience.
After this was over, he went on to the top of the spur, where the young
folks of different ages were gathered, in several large groups and
circles, playing games. In the largest circle, where the young men and
maidens were playing "Old Bald Eagle," a game that was a combination
of quadrille and Virginia reel, with a song accompaniment, Fult was
leading, and his partner was a young and extremely pretty stranger,
at the sight of whom Jeems stopped stone-still and gazed with all his
eyes. Aunt Ailsie's warning came to him with a pang after a while:
"Ricollect, sech as that hain't for you." He sighed deeply, and felt a
dull anger with Fult's youth and beauty.
Still another very young and pretty one--the one with the "crow's-wing
hair and blue eyes"--sat on a bench not far away; but Darcy Kent was at
her side.
After a long while, the play-games stopped, and the merry crowd
trooped down the hill and home--all save Fult and a few of his cronies,
who stopped at the big tent, where Fult was soon picking a banjo and
singing ballads for the stranger. Jeems leaned against a tree-trunk
outside, and waited for the fateful hour of milking to arrive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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