"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily, almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry--just sort o' tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once more, and sank back into sleep. The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room, Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods, out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood were employed. "That's the reason Callista come over here," [216] old Kimbro said mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to herself." "Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously. Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl, except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to stay--and don't say too much about that--she knows it." "Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can get what she wants from the store--Derf's place," put in Sylvane. An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face. The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it would simplify matters greatly. "Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister prompted Sylvane. He nodded. "I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said, boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come, Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and forth all the time whilst he's workin' there." [217] But when this easy method of communication was brought to the notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.