"
"Shall we wait for them?"
"Oh, no--I reckon not."
Soon they overtook two men on horseback, and after they passed and
were fifty yards ahead of them, one of the men lifted his voice
jestingly:
"Is that your woman, stranger, or have you just borrowed her?"
Hale shouted back:
"No, I'm sorry to say, I've just borrowed her," and he turned to
see how she would take this answering pleasantry. She was looking
down shyly and she did not seem much pleased.
"They are kinfolks o' mine, too," she said, and whether it was in
explanation or as a rebuke, Hale could not determine.
"You must be kin to everybody around here?"
"Most everybody," she said simply.
By and by they came to a creek.
"I have to turn up here," said Hale.
"So do I," she said, smiling now directly at him.
"Good!" he said, and they went on--Hale asking more questions. She
was going to school at the county seat the coming winter and she
was fifteen years old.
"That's right. The trouble in the mountains is that you girls
marry so early that you don't have time to get an education." She
wasn't going to marry early, she said, but Hale learned now that
she had a sweetheart who had been in town that day and apparently
the two had had a quarrel.
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