"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened circumflex on the vowel that lent it [81] a world of meaning. "O-o-o-oh! . . . a man! Well--that's mighty different. If a feller's got the looks--and the ways--he can fly 'round amongst the gals for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But when a man marries a gal, he wants a _womern_--a womern that'll keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right. The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow, I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time. Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort--yo' mighty right she wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, Big _and_ Little. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated. "Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their victuals with 'em." Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the door. "All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the gal best I knowed how. I reckon _you_ think the fault--sence you see so much fault in her--comes from my raisin'; but I know mighty well an' good that the only trouble _I_ ever had with Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. [82] How you can expect the cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her, is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away toward the log stable to begin his harnessing. Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous, semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental, examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out all the world and find once more that island of delight where they should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought. It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and charm. "Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her sisters that [83] his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively disrespectful.