emptuously, as he whipped his rod and
line into the stream and reseated himself, his bare feet sinking into
the cooling water. "Why, it ain't up to my waist," he said. "I could
wade across."

"No, he's safe enough," Henley heard his coarse voice saying, as he
stood over her and looked down on her expressionless bonnet.

She looked up and pushed her bonnet back farther so that a wisp of her
beautiful hair was exposed to the sunlight against the shell-like
pinkness of her neck. "He hasn't caught a thing," she said; "but he's
had some bites that was just as much fun."

"I'm sorter tired," he ventured. "I've been on my feet all day, running
first one place and another. This is your picnic, and you are the boss.
I wonder if you'd care if I set down a minute."

"It may be my picnic, but it happens to be your ground," she laughed.
"There's a sign up at the fence that no trespassing is allowed, but me
and Joe neither one can read, and so we came right in and helped
ourselves."

He lowered himself to the grass at her feet, glad that he had it, and
yet almost afraid of the full view he now had of her face when he dared
to look directly at her. He leaned forward and began to pluck blades of
grass and twist them nervously in his fingers.

"You are powerful good to that boy," he said, after a silence through
which several kinds of thoughts percolated. "His own mammy couldn't
treat him better."

"I don't know whether I'm spoiling him or not." He detected a slight
quavering in her voice which was not exactly that of her usual
composure. "Some folks say I am. I know I can't bear to have him work
hard, although he is plumb well now. He had such a hard time under Sam
Pitman that, somehow, I want him to have a good, long vacation.
Alfred--" She raised her hand to her lips impulsively, colored
vexatiously, and then with a shrug, as if the familiar use of his name
were a matter that could not be remedied, she continued; "I started to
say that it makes me awful sad to think of the slavery that child went
through, short as it was. It might have made a scoundrel of him, in the
long-run, for he was getting hardened."

"And now he's just the reverse." Henley meant it as a tribute to her,
and it was as bold a compliment as he would have dared to pay her in the
dense anxiety through which he was groping. "He's a manly little chap,
and is sure to come out on top. I've been studying over it"--Henley was
growing a trifle bolder--his eyes me