ravishingly. "I'm sure I'm troubling you."
In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully laid together;
indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few that she had not indicated.
"Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy that's coming down
the hill?" she said, pointing to a buggy driven by a small boy which
was slowly approaching the gate. The men tenderly lifted the uprooted
plants, and proceeded solemnly, Miss Wells bringing up the rear, towards
the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily lounging.
They passed out first. Miss Wells lingered for an instant, and then
advancing her beautiful but audacious face within an inch of Jackson's,
hissed out, "Make-believe! and hypocrite!"
"Cross-patch and sauce-box!" returned Jackson readily, still under the
malign influence of his boyish past, as she flounced away.
Presently he heard the buggy rattle away with his persecutor. But his
partners still lingered on the road in earnest conversation, and when
they did return it was with a singular awkwardness and embarrassment,
which he naturally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish
weakness in succumbing to the girl's demands.
But he was a little surprised when Dexter Rice approached him gloomily.
"Of course," he began, "it ain't no call of ours to interfere in family
affairs, and you've a right to keep 'em to yourself, but if you'd been
fair and square and above board in what you got off on us about this
per--"
"What do you mean?" demanded the astonished Wells.
"Well--callin' her a 'red-haired gal.'"
"Well--she is a red-haired girl!" said Wells impatiently.
"A man," continued Rice pityingly, "that is so prejudiced as to apply
such language to a beautiful orphan--torn with grief at the loss of a
beloved but d----d misconstruing parent--merely because she begs a few
vegetables out of his potato patch, ain't to be reasoned with. But when
you come to look at this thing by and large, and as a fa'r-minded man,
sonny, you'll agree with us that the sooner you make terms with her the
|