Charming Billy, looking far more frightened than she, pulled himself loose and backed away.  Mama Joy looked at him, and there was that in her eyes which sent a qualm of something very like disgust over Billy, so that in his toes he felt the quiver.

“It was an accident, Mrs. Bridger,” he said laconically, and went out hastily, leaving her standing there staring after him.

Outside, he twitched his shoulders as if he would still free himself of something distasteful.  “Hell!  What do I want with her?” he muttered indignantly, and did not stop to think where he was going until he brought up at the stable.  He had the reins of Barney in his hand, and had put his foot in the stirrup before he quite came to himself.  “Hell!” he exploded again, and led Barney back into the stall.

Charming Billy sat down on a box and began to build a smoke; his fingers shook a great deal, so that he sifted out twice as much tobacco as he needed.  He felt utterly bewildered and ashamed and sorry, and he could not think very clearly.  He lighted the cigarette, smoked it steadily, pinched out the stub and rolled another before he came back to anything like calm.

Even when he could bring himself to face what had happened and what it meant, he winced mentally away from the subject.  He could still feel the clinging pressure of her round, bare arms against his neck, and he once more gave his shoulders a twitch.  Three cigarettes he smoked, staring at a warped board in the stall partition opposite him.

When the third was burned down to a very short stub he pinched out the fire, dropped the stab to the dirt floor and deliberately set his foot upon it, grinding it into the damp soil.  It was as if he also set his foot upon something else, so grimly intent was the look on his face.

“Hell!” he said for the third time, and drew a long breath.  “Well, this has got to stop right here!” He got up, took off his hat and inspected it gravely, redimpled the crown, set it upon his head a trifle farther back than usual, stuck his hands aggressively into his pockets and went back to the house.  This time he did not go to the kitchen but around to the front porch, and he whistled shrilly the air of his own pet ditty that his arrival might be heralded before him.

Later, when he was sitting at the table eating a hastily prepared dinner with Mama Joy hovering near and seeming, to the raw nerves of Billy, surrounded by an atmosphere of reproach and coy invitation, he kept his eyes turned from her and ate rapidly that he might the sooner quit her presence.  Flora was out riding somewhere, she told him when he asked.  Dill came in and saved Billy from fleeing the place before his hunger slept, and Billy felt justified in breathing easily and in looking elsewhere than at his plate.

“I see you’ve been getting busy with the barbwire,” he remarked, when he rose from the table and led the way out to the porch.