Stubble. George Looms
Buzz was in a jam, and—well, I thought I'd better come." He turned on her suddenly. "Keeping tab on me, aren't you? How'd you know?"
"I reckon I'd better, Joe." And then more softly: "Think it's the best way to do? Uncle Buzz's been in deep water before." She rose to her feet and walked slowly to the opposite entrance. "How are things—at the works?"
He was silent a moment. "Same old place. Take more'n a war to change 'em." He came and stood beside her in the doorway. The sun was making a last desperate attempt to lighten the general gray of the sky with broad shafts of orange, and as they watched, it settled slowly and then dipped behind the dim blue of the distant hills. As at a signal, a bird in a thicket somewhere over beyond them began a long throaty warble. Another answered over to the left. Faint, liquid trip-hammerings, they were, upon brittle anvils.
"It's a good thing some things don't change," she said at length, in a low tone.
"I reckon."
They watched the glow fade from the sky, the broad bands of orange receding swiftly westward, while the cloud rim above the horizon cooled softly into pink and coral and a sudden soft patter of rain upon the dried vines and leaves above their heads aroused them. Without a word, Mary Louise slipped past him and ran for the house. He followed.
On the side porch she turned and waited for him, and he came and stood before her, hatless, in the rain. "I'd better be getting back before it gets any worse—see you in the morning?"
"Let me get you an umbrella." She turned and was about to enter the house.
"No. Can't use 'em. Get hung up in the trees. What time you want to start out? Nine o'clock? See you at nine."
"That's too early. Make it ten. I'm busy. Besides, it's Sunday."
"Comin' at nine," he called over his shoulder and started for the gate.
She watched his retreating figure as he darted along through the shadow, and then she slowly turned and entered the sitting room. A dim yellow light from a single oil lamp on the table over against the right wall was feebly penetrating the deep shadows in far corners. The low-ceilinged room seemed huge and cavernous, with deep niches and crannies and bulky, shadowy objects. Miss Susie sat by the table with her knitting, her face yellower than ever, her hands feverishly restive. She raised her head as Mary Louise closed the door, and the tiny lines, accentuated by the lamplight, covered her face like markings upon an ancient scroll.
"Why didn't he come in, honey?"
"I don't know, Aunt Susie. He was in a hurry."
"What's he doing in town? Thought he'd gone back to work in Louisville."
"I don't know, Aunt Susie."
Miss McCallum picked up her knitting. She sniffed. "No, I s'pose not."
Mary Louise went over and kissed her aunt lightly upon the forehead, and then disappeared through a shadowy door back into shadowy depths. Directly came a sound of clattering tinware and then the faint echoes of a song, hummed, and slightly nasal. A smile flickered across Miss Susie's lips as she watched her fingers—the needles flitting swiftly in and out.
CHAPTER II
They drew rein on a hill which sloped gently away to the town a mile or so distant. Over to the right in a cluster of trees gleamed the white fences and buildings of the Bloomfield Fair Grounds like a blob of paint squeezed on a dark palette.
Mary Louise turned in the saddle and took a long thirsty look at the western sky. "I love these days that are unplanned. They bring so much more when there isn't any promise."
Joe took off his hat and wiped his forehead, keeping tight rein in the meantime with his other hand on his roan saddler, who, scenting the home stretch, was restless to be off. "After which original tribute to my day, I hesitate to tell you that it has been a hunch of mine for over a year—ever since that first spring in Texas. Made up my mind if ever I struck God's country alive and in one piece, I'd treat myself to a great bath of this sort of stuff. Unplanned! Humph!"
Mary Louise's tight little mouth relaxed but she did not shift her gaze. "You forget. It was not planned—by me." On rare occasions Mary Louise could slip from her matter-of-fact self into coquetry and back again before one realized. It was like the play of a lightning shuttle, so quick that one rarely caught the flash of the back stroke. Joe had erred before. He was discreetly silent.
"I love it," Mary Louise went on, flinging back her head, "every stick, every stone of it. That half mile of turf down Blue Bottle Lane! I'd give ten years of my life to gallop the rest of it through country like that." And then, as though startled, she bit her lip and was still.
Joe smiled as he watched her narrowly. "A woman's a mess o' contradictions. Whoa! You, too," he called sharply to his mare. "Thought you wanted to eat grass a little. Whoa!" He reined up the tossing head with difficulty. And then to Mary Louise, "You're a sort of self-inflicted exile, aren't you?"
Mary Louise turned from her musing and gave him a look of most effective scorn. "Put your hat on," she said coldly. "You talk better through it." She was backing her mount out from the thicket whence he had thrust his nose and was wheeling him about to point him toward home. "I suppose you'd leave your job in Louisville and come back here to live yourself—just because you loved the scenery!"
"Not such a bad swap at that." But she was off and away. One rearing plunge and he was after her. Down across the grassy sweep of turf they fled, across a shallow ditch, past a stretch of willow thicket, around a jutting knob of rock, into an arching avenue of trees. It was like dropping into a cool, shadowy bowl, the first shoots and sproutings of baby leaves from the branches casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the golden-green shimmer of the grass. Through an open gate they shot, he close behind, out upon a hard metallic roadway of macadam. Here Mary Louise reined in her horse and Joe instantly drew up alongside.
"It's lucky the street came along to help," he breathed. "Twenty yards more——"
Mary Louise reached up a hand to her hair in a futile effort to stem the havoc there. A moment of furious attempt to quiet the racing in her veins, and then, quite calmly, "It's all as it should be. We've got to look out for such things and take advantage of them. There are no ifs and buts about being caught. You didn't—that's all."
Joe opened his mouth to speak, stared at her a moment, and then turned away his eyes. They trotted along in silence, the shadows deepening and lengthening.
Directly: "When does your tea room open?"
"To-morrow. I'll be fine and stiff to start it off." Both question and answer had taken on a fine flavour of impersonality. Quiet again, with only the clatter of hoofs on the roadway. Directly they turned a wide sweeping curve and before them appeared a wooden gateway set at the end of an avenue of elms, at the other end of which showed, dim and forbidding, a house with columns and a green roof. Joe dismounted and, unlatching the gate, turned and stood grinning at her.
"So you're really goin' to try it out?" His voice had the quality of self-questioning.
It broke in on her musings and she seemed a bit impatient. "Of course I'm going to try it out. Only there isn't much 'try' to it. It's bound to make a go."
"Some little difference between a merely commercial proposition and a popular charity like the Red Cross. There's no percentage in just guzzlin' tea for fun unless you're doin' it to keep Americans from starvin' or doughboys from itchin'. You know what I believe?" He turned on her suddenly. "You're just scrapin' up an excuse to—to——" He stammered, hesitated in indecision. "Tea!"
"Don't be maudlin, Joe!" Her tone was very cold. "If you must know, we need the money and——Well, I guess I learned enough about tea and tea rooms in the past ten or eleven months to know whether one will pay or not—if it's properly run. Got awfully hardboiled while you were in the army, didn't you? Come, open the gate."
He was silent. Mary Louise usually could put him in his place. But thus put in his place, Joe could assume all