"'She's pizened me, mother, make my bed soon,
Fer I'm sick at my heart and I fain would lay doon.'"
The man rose and went to meet her.
"Miss Sally," he began, uncertainly, "I want to talk to you."
She was always very grave and diffident with Lescott. He was a strange
new type to her, and, though she had begun with a predilection in his
favor, she had since then come to hold him in adverse prejudice. Before
his arrival, Samson had been all hers. She had not missed in her lover
the gallantries that she and her women had never known. At evening,
when the supper dishes were washed and she sat in the honeysuckle
fragrance of the young night with the whippoorwills calling, she had
been accustomed to hear a particular whippoorwill-note call, much like
the real ones, yet distinct to her waiting ears. She was wont to rise
and go to the stile to meet him. She had known that every day she
would, seemingly by chance, meet Samson somewhere along the creek, or
on the big bowlder at the rift, or hoeing on the sloping cornfield.
These things had been enough. But, of late, his interests had been
divided. This painter had claimed many of his hours and many of his
thoughts. There was in her heart an unconfessed jealousy of the
foreigner. Now, she scrutinized him solemnly, and nodded.
"Won't you sit down?" he invited, and the girl dropped cross-legged on
a mossy rock, and waited. To-day, she wore a blue print dress, instead
of the red one. It was always a matter of amazement to the man that in
such an environment she was not only wildly beautiful, but invariably
the pink of neatness. She could climb a tree or a mountain, or emerge
from a sweltering blackberry patch, seemingly as fresh and unruffled as
she had been at the start. The man stood uncomfortably looking at her,
and was momentarily at a loss for words with which to commence.
"What was ye a-goin' ter tell me?" she asked.
"Miss Sally," he began, "I've discovered something about Samson."
Her blue eyes flashed ominously.
"Ye can't tell me nothin' 'bout Samson," she declared, "withouten
hit's somethin' nice."
"It's something very nice," the man reassured her.
"Then, ye needn't tell me, because I already knows hit," came her
prompt and confident announcement.
Lescott shook his head, dubiously.
"Samson is a genius," he said.
"What's thet?"
"He has great gifts--great abilities to become a figure in the world."