“There’s sense in that, sir,” he said, after thinking it over.  “You see, Mr. Vandemark, my days of honest industry are of very recent date.  Thank you for the suggestion, sir.”

I got up to leave.  Rowena’s father was pulling off his boots, which with us then, was the signal that he was going to bed.  If I stayed after that alone with Rowena, it was a sign that we were to “sit up”—­and that was courtship.  I was slowly getting it through my wool that it looked as if Buckner Gowdy and Rowena were going to sit up, when I heard her giving me back my good evening, and at the same time, behind his back, motioning me to my chair, and shaking her head.  And while I was backing and filling, the door’ opened and a woman appeared on the step.

“Ah, Mrs. Mobley,” said Buck, “anything for me?”

She was very nicely dressed for a woman busy about her own home, but the thing that I remembered was her pallor.  Her hair was light brown and curled about her forehead, and her eyes were very blue, like china.  And there was a quiver in her like that which you see in the little quaking-asps in the slews—­something pitiful, and sort of forsaken.  Her face was not so fresh as it had been a few years before, and on her cheeks were little red spots, like those you see in the cheeks of people with consumption—­or a pot of face-paint.  She was tall and strong-looking, and somewhat portly, and quite masterful in her ways as a general rule; but that night she seemed to be in a sort of pleading mood, not a bit like herself when dealing with ordinary people.  She was not ordinary, as could be sensed by even an ignorant bumpkin like me.  She had more education than most, and had been taught better manners and brought up with more style.

“Mr. Mobley requested me to say,” she said, her voice low and quivery, bowing to all of us in a very polite and elegant way, “that he has something of importance to say to you, Mr. Buckner.”

“I’m greatly obliged to you, Miss Flora,” said he.  “Let me go to him with you.  Good evening, Rowena.  Good evening, Mr. Vandemark.  I shall certainly think over what you have been so kind as to suggest.”

He bowed to Rowena, nodded to me, and we all three left together.  As we separated I heard him talking to her in what in any other man I should have called a loving tone; but there was a sort of warm note in the way he spoke to me, too; and still more of that vital vibration I have mentioned before, when he spoke to Rowena.  But he did not take my arm, as he did that of the imposing “Miss Flora” as he called Mrs. Mobley, to whom he was “Mr. Buckner.”  I could see them walking very, very close together, even in the darkness.

6

When I found that Mr. Mobley was over at the barracks, and had been there playing euchre with the boys since supper, I wondered.  I wondered why Mrs. Mobley had come with an excuse to get Mr. Gowdy away from me—­or after a couple of weeks’ thinking, was it from Rowena?  Yet Mr. Gowdy did see Mr. Mobley that evening; for the next morning Mobley put me over a gang of eight breaking-teams, “To handle the way you told Mr. Gowdy last night,” he said.