and regarding him with a kind of mischievous pity.
"Look here," she said, "I reckon that'll do! You kin pull up short! I
kin see what's the matter with you; you're jest plumb tired, tuckered
out, and want to turn in! So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper
ready and never mind me." In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising
color. The girl only shook her head. "Don't tell me! You ain't keering
to talk, and you're only playin' Sacramento statistics on me," she
retorted, with unfeigned cheerfulness. "Anyhow, here's the wimmen
comin', and supper is ready."
There was a sound of weary, resigned ejaculations and pantings, and
three gaunt women in lustreless alpaca gowns appeared before the cabin.
They seemed prematurely aged and worn with labor, anxiety, and ill
nourishment. Doubtless somewhere in these ruins a flower like Jay Jules
had once flourished; doubtless somewhere in that graceful nymph herself
the germ of this dreary maturity was hidden. Hemmingway welcomed them
with a seriousness equal to their own. The supper was partaken with the
kind of joyless formality which in the southwest is supposed to indicate
deep respect, even the cheerful Jay falling under the influence, and it
was with a feeling of relief that at last the young man retired to his
fenced-off corner for solitude and repose. He gathered, however,
that before "sun up" the next morning the elder women were going to
Rattlesnake Bar for the weekly shopping, leaving Jay as before to
prepare his breakfast and then join them later. It was already a change
in his sentiments to find himself looking forward to that tete-a-tete
with the young girl, as a chance of redeeming his character in her
eyes. He was beginning to feel he had been stupid, unready, and withal
prejudiced. He undressed himself in his seclusion, broken only by the
monotonous voices in the adjoining apartment. From time to time he
heard fragments and scraps of their conversation, always in reference to
affairs of the household and settlement, but never of himself,--not even
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