The lad regarded her anxiously. More than once [229] he opened his lips to speak, only to close them, again. Slowly the red surged up over his tanned young face, until it burned dark crimson to the roots of his brown hair. "I--you--w'y, Callisty," he faltered in a choked, husky whisper, his eyes beseeching forgiveness for such an offense against mountaineer reserve and delicacy. Her own pale cheeks flushed faintly as she began to see what was in the poor boy's mind; but her eyes did not flinch, while in an agony of sympathy and burning embarrassment he whispered, "After a while--Sis' Callie--you'll have obliged--after a while you'll surely send such word." There was silence between them for a long minute, then, "I never will," said Callista, in a low, dreary, implacable voice. "You can fill my bucket and carry it up for me if you're a mind, Sylvane, I'll set here a spell." Callista appeared only briefly at the dinner table, where she said little and ate less, soon slipping away again to her retreat by the far spring. After the meal, the dark court-like vista of the entry invited the guests; from thence a murmur of conversation sounded through all the drowsy afternoon,--the slow desultory conversation of mountaineers. Even the play of the children was hushed. [230] It was one of the few hot days of the mountain season. All the forest drowsed in a vast sun-dream. The Cleaverage place itself, for all its swarming life, seemed asleep too. Chickens picked and wallowed in the dust; there were no birds, except a cardinal whistling from the hill. The loosed plow-horses drooped in the stable shadow, listless and _ennuye_, looking as if they would rather be at work. Only wandering shotes seemed undisturbed by the broad white glare of the sunlight. Octavia Gentry went home that day from the Cleaverage cabin in tears. She waited long and patiently an opportunity to speak alone with her daughter; but when, toward evening, enormous flowers of cumuli blossomed slowly, augustly, in the west, flushed petal on petal opening, to be pushed back by the next above it, and rolling gently away into shadows delicately gray, she went uneasily out into the yard and called to old Ajax. While they were talking a heavier cloud, crowding darkly against the western sun, began to send forth long diapason tones of thunder. Drumright got suddenly to his feet and hurried to "ketch out" his mule, while his wife rounded up the children. At noon the heat had been palpitant. Now a shadow bore relief over all the land; a breeze flew across the wood, turning up the whitish under sides of the leaves; and before they could get started there was a quick thrill of [231] rain--tepid, perpendicular--and then the sun looking out again within twenty minutes.