“Just go on and slice it all up,” he answered with a laugh.  “I’d rather watch you than eat.”

“Wait till I butter these for you and then you can eat—­and watch me—­me finish working the butter.  Won’t that do as well?  Think what an encouragement your interest will be to me!  Really, nothing in the world paces a woman’s work like a man looking on, and if he doesn’t stop her she’ll drop under the line.  Now, you have your bread and butter and you can sit over there by the door and help me turn off this ten pounds in no time.”

As she had been speaking, Rose Mary had spread two of the slices with the yellow butter from a huge bowl in front of her, clapped on the tops of the sandwiches and then, with a smile, handed them in a blue plate to the man who lounged across the corner of her table.  She made a very gracious and lovely picture, did Rose Mary, in her light-blue homespun gown against the cool gray depths of the milk-house, which was fern-lined along the cracks of the old stones and mysterious with the trickling gurgle of the spring that flowed into the long stone troughs, around the milk crocks and out under the stone door-sill.  From his post by the door Everett watched her as she drove her paddle deep into the hard golden mound in the blue bowl in front of her, and, with a quick turn of her strong, slender wrist slapped and patted chunk after chunk of the butter into a more compressed form.  The sleeves of her dress were rolled almost to her shoulders and under the white, moist flesh of her arms the fine muscles showed plainly.  The strong curves of her back and shoulders bent and sprung under the graceful sweep of her arms and her round breasts rose and fell with quickened breath from her energetic movements.

“Now, you’re making me work too hard,” she laughed; and she panted as she rested her hand for a second against the edge of the bowl and looked up at Everett from under a black tendril curl that had fallen down across her forehead.

“Miss Rose Mary Alloway, you are one large, husky—­witch,” calmly remarked the hungry man as he finished disposing of the last half of one of the thin bread and butters.  “Here I sit enchanted by—­by a butter-paddle, when you and I both know that not two miles across the meadows there runs a train that ought to put me into New York in a little over forty-eight hours.  Won’t you, won’t you let me go—­back to my frantic and imploring employers?”

“Why no, I can’t,” answered Rose Mary as she pressed a yellow cake of butter on to a blue plate and deftly curled it up with her paddle into a huge yellow sunflower.  “Uncle Tucker captured you roaming loose out in his fields and he trusts you to me while he is at work and I must keep you safe.  He’s fond of you and so are the Aunties and Stonewall Jackson and Shoofly and Sniffer and—­”

“And anybody else?” demanded Everett, preparing to dispose of the last bite.