The Call of the Cumberlands

The compliment was so obviously not intended as compliment at all that

the girl flushed with pleasure.

"Then," went on Samson, his face slowly drawing with pain, "I was

thinking of my own people. My mother was about forty when she died. She

was an old woman. My father was forty-three. He was an old man. I was

thinking how they withered under their drudgery--and of the monstrous

injustice of it all."

Adrienne Lescott nodded. Her eyes were sweetly sympathetic.

"It's the hardship of the conditions," she said, softly. "Those

conditions will change."

"But that's not all I was thinking," went on the boy.

"I was watching you lift your coffee-cup awhile ago. You did it

unconsciously, but your movement was dainty and graceful, as though an

artist had posed you. That takes generations, and, in my imagination, I

saw my people sitting around an oil-cloth on a kitchen table, pouring

coffee into their saucers."

"'There are five and twenty ways

"'Of writing tribal lays,'"

quoted the girl, smilingly, "'And every single one of them is right.'"

"And a horrible thought came to me," continued Samson. He took out his

handkerchief, and mopped his forehead, then tossed back the long lock

that fell over it. "I wondered"--he paused, and then went on with a set

face--"I wondered if I were growing ashamed of my people."

"If I thought that," said Miss Lescott, quietly, "I wouldn't have much

use for you. But I know there's no danger."

"If I thought there was," Samson assured her, "I would go back there

to Misery, and shoot myself to death.... And, yet, the thought came to

me."

"I'm not afraid of your being a cad," she repeated.

"And yet," he smiled, "I was trying to imagine you among my people.

What was that rhyme you used to quote to me when you began to teach me

manners?"

She laughed, and fell into nonsense quotation, as she thrummed lightly

on the table-cloth with her slim fingers.

"'The goops they lick their fingers,

"'The goops eat with their knives,

"'They spill their broth on the table-cloth,

"'And lead disgusting lives.'"

"My people do all those things," announced Samson, though he said it

rather in a manner of challenge than apology, "except spilling their

broth on the table-cloth.... There are no table-cloths. What would you

do in such company?"