“I don’t want you to do that, mother,” objected Harriet, quite seriously.

Mrs. Floyd laughed slyly as she turned away.  “You leave them two Jakes to me.  I feel like I was a girl again.  We used to have lots o’ fun with Mr. Floyd, me ‘n’ mother did.  Did I ever tell you the time me’n’ her—­” But Harriet, with a preoccupied air, had turned away.

Chapter XVIII

Westerfelt went back to the stable and ordered Jake to get out his horse and buggy.  Washburn watched him over the back of the mule he was hitching to a spring wagon and smiled.  “Got it in the neck that pop!” he murmured.  “I knowed Bates wusn’t a-buyin’ a new whip an’ lap-robe fer nothin’.  I’ll bet my life Mr. Westerfelt ‘ll lose that gal, an’, by George, he ort to!  He don’t seem to know his own mind.”

Just then Bascom Bates whirled by on his way to the hotel.  There was something glaringly incongruous between his glistening silk hat and the long-haired “plough horse” and rickety buggy he was driving.  The silk hat was a sort of badge of office; lawyers wore them, as a rule, and he was the only lawyer at Cartwright.  He had bought his silk hat on the day of his admission to the bar, and had worn it regularly on dry Sundays ever since.  It would have suited anybody else better than it did him.  He was not at all good-looking.  His hair was stiff and rather red, his eyes were pale blue, his face was freckled, and the skin of his neck had a way of folding itself unattractively.  He wore thick cow-leather shoes, which he never blacked, but greased frequently, and that made them catch and hold the dust.  He never considered himself carefully dressed unless all the buttons of his vest were unfastened, except one at the top and one at the bottom.  The gap between the two buttons was considered quite a touch of rural style.  He held the reins, but a little negro boy sat on the seat beside him.  He was taking the boy to hold his horse while he went into the hotel after Harriet.  That, too, was considered quite the proper thing—­a custom which had come down from slavery days—­and as there was a scarcity of black boys in the village, Bates had brought his all the way from his father’s plantation.  The boy was expected to walk back home after the couple got started, but Bates intended to give him something for his trouble, and the distinction of holding Mr. Bates’s horse in town was something the boy never expected to forget.

Bates had been a common farm-boy before he studied law, and the handles of ploughs, axes, and grubbing-hoes had enlarged the joints of his fingers and hardened his palms.  He had studied at night, earned a reputation as an off-hand speaker hard to be downed in debating societies, made a few speeches on the stump for willing gubernatorial candidates, and was now looked upon as a possible Democratic nominee for the Legislature.  Most young lawyers in that part of the State were called “Colonel,” and Bates had been addressed by the title once or twice.