ight. I was driving the cow 'long
here and saw you through the window in the kitchen cooking your supper.
A woman's heart is tender toward children and to a man that she--to a
man that is plumb helpless and bungling about over things he has no
business to fool with. Alfred, your frying-pan had a sediment of eggs,
meat, grease, and pure dirt on the bottom as hard as the iron itself. I
had to chop it out with a hatchet. Your coffee-kettle was full to the
spout with old grounds, and you left a ham of meat lying flat on the
floor, and the flour-barrel was open for the hens to nest in."

"So you was there, too," said Henley. "I thought Pomp done it."

"Pomp? He's a man, if he is black," the girl sniffed. "He wouldn't have
thought anything was wrong if he'd found the house-cat sleeping in the
bread-tray. No, you've got to be attended to some way or other. I don't
know how, but it's got to be done."

"I'll make it all right," Henley declared. "I'm used to knocking about."

Dixie shook her head. They had reached his gate, and she paused,
allowing the cow to trudge on homeward. "You may not know it, Alfred,"
she said, "but you are changed. You look restless and unsettled. You
made one of your best trades the other day in buying them mules, but you
haven't been to see 'em once since you turned 'em in the pasture. It
ain't like you. You used to be so full of fun. This money your wife has
come into has upset you. You don't feel exactly right about it."

"I'll admit it," he said, softly. "I want her to get all she can out of
the good things of this world; but, somehow, that knocked me out--clean
out. I've made my own way in this life, and I want to keep doing it.
Men come to me every day and wish me joy in another man's death. I get
mad enough to slap 'em in the mouth. One fool said it was silly of me to
keep working when I had such a soft bed to lie on."

"I knew you'd feel that way," Dixie said, her eyes full of sympathetic
tenderness. "I was just thinking to-day of how many trials we've been
through together. I've helped you a little, maybe, and you've been my
mainstay. There is only one thing I'm plumb ashamed of, Alfred, and when
I think of it I get hot enough to singe my hair."

"What was that?" he asked in surprise.

"You remember--the time I engaged myself to a man I had never laid my
eyes on." And Henley saw that she was blushing. "I'd give my right arm,
and do my work with my left, to wipe that off my slate forever.