"No--it don't settle nothin'," broke in Octavia anxiously. "Lance ain't got any land cleared to speak of over on his place, and he ain't put in any crop; how air the both of 'em to live? [77] They'll just about have obliged to stay here with us. You can find work for Lance on the farm, cain't ye, Pappy?" Old Ajax measured his prospective grand-son-in-law with a steady eye, and assured himself that there was not room on the farm nor in the house for two masters. He read mastery in every line of face and figure. Lance got to his feet so suddenly that he might have been said to leap up. "I've built me a good cabin, and it's all ready. Callista and me are goin' into no house but our own," he said brusquely. "Ain't that so, Callista?" Again the girl within the doorway answered in that hushed, almost reluctant voice, "Just as you say. Lance." And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and even scolded, that ended the argument. "I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to bid, mother?" That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled, realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton Hands. As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost indignantly, [78] "Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when you've just been promised." Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed departure a moment, and then he delivered himself. "I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two families." "Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone. "This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to that talk." "I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did," observed Gentry; "for I would--and do. Lance Cleaverage has took up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."