Yet, when Samson that evening gave his whippoorwill call at the Widow
Miller's cabin, he found a dejected and miserable girl sitting on the
stile, with her chin propped in her two hands and her eyes full of
somberness and foreboding.
"What's the matter, Sally?" questioned he, anxiously. "Hes that low-down
Tamarack Spicer been round here tellin' ye some more stories ter pester
ye?"
She shook her head in silence. Usually, she bore the brunt of their
conversations, Samson merely agreeing with, or overruling, her in
lordly brevities. The boy climbed up and sat beside her.
"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill
come Saturday," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over
thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"
He waited for her usual delighted assent, but Sally only told him
absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At
last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly
demanded: "Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"
"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.
For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a
rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six
weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging.
Finally, she spoke in a grave voice: "Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed
as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She
made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.
"He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally. If I'd been plumb sartin in my
mind, I'd a-told ye myself--not but what I knows," he hastily amended,
"thet he meant hit friendly."
"Air ye a-goin'?"
"I'm studyin' about hit."
He awaited objection, but none came. Then, with a piquing of his
masculine vanity, he demanded: "Hain't ye a-keerin', Sally, whether I goes, or not?"
The girl grew rigid. Her fingers on the crumbling plank of the stile's
top tightened and gripped hard. The moonlit landscape seemed to whirl
in a dizzy circle. Her face did not betray her, nor her voice, though
she had to gulp down a rising lump in her throat before she could
answer calmly.
"I thinks ye had ought ter go, Samson."
The boy was astonished. He had avoided the subject for fear of her
opposition--and tears.
Then, slowly, she went on as though repeating a lesson painstakingly
conned: "There hain't nothin' in these here hills fer ye, Samson. Down thar,
ye'll see lots of things thet's new--an' civilized an' beautiful! Ye'll
see lots of gals thet kin read an' write, gals dressed up in all kinds
of fancy fixin's." Her glib words ran out and ended in a sort of inward
gasp.