Once only Dave spoke to her, and that was when Loretta said she
must go. June was out in the porch looking at the already beloved
garden, and hearing his step she turned. He looked her steadily in
the eyes. She saw his gaze drop to the fairy-stone at her throat,
and a faint sneer appeared at his set mouth--a sneer for June's
folly and what he thought was uppishness in "furriners" like Hale.
"So you ain't good enough fer him jest as ye air--air ye?" he said
slowly. "He's got to make ye all over agin--so's you'll be fitten
fer him."
He turned away without looking to see how deep his barbed shaft
went and, startled, June flushed to her hair. In a few minutes
they were gone--Dave without the exchange of another word with
June, and Loretta with a parting cry that she would come back on
Saturday. The old man went to the cornfield high above the cabin,
the old woman, groaning with pains real and fancied, lay down on a
creaking bed, and June, with Dave's wound rankling, went out with
Bub to see the new doings in Lonesome Cove. The geese cackled
before her, the hog-fish darted like submarine arrows from rock to
rock and the willows bent in the same wistful way toward their
shadows in the little stream, but its crystal depths were there no
longer--floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the surface and the
water was black as soot.
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