CHAPTER XXI

THICKET POINT

It was a point with Mr. Ware to see just as little as possible of Betty.  He had no taste for what he called female chatter.  A sane interest in the price of cotton or pork he considered the only rational test of human intelligence, and Betty evinced entire indifference where those great staples were concerned, hence it was agreeable to him to have most of his meals served in his office.

At first Betty had sought to adapt herself to his somewhat peculiar scheme of life, but Tom had begged her not to regard him, his movements from hour to hour were cloaked in uncertainty.  The man who had to overlook the labor of eighty or ninety field hands was the worst sort of a slave himself; the niggers knew when they could sit down to a meal; he never did.

But for all his avoidance of Betty, he in reality kept the closest kind of a watch on her movements, and when he learned that she had visited Charley Norton—­George, the groom, was the channel through which this information reached him—­he was both scandalized and disturbed.  He felt the situation demanded some sort of a protest.

“Isn’t it just hell the way a woman can worry you?” he lamented, as he hurried up the path from the barns to the house.  He found Betty at supper.

“I thought I’d have a cup of tea with you, Bet—­what else have you that’s good?” he inquired genially, as he dropped into a chair.

“That was nice of you; we don’t see very much of each other, do we, Tom?” said Betty pleasantly.

Mr. Ware twisted his features, on which middle age had rested an untender hand, into a smile.

“When a man undertakes to manage a place like Belle Plain his work’s laid out for him, Betty, and an old fellow like me is pretty apt to go one of two ways; either he takes to hard living to keep himself in trim, or he pampers himself soft.”

“But you aren’t old, Tom!”

“I wish I were sure of seeing forty-five or even forty-eight again—­but I’m not,” said Tom.

“But that isn’t really old,” objected Betty.

“Well, that’s old enough, Bet, as you’ll discover for yourself one of these days.”

“Mercy, Tom!” cried Betty.

Mr. Ware consumed a cup of tea in silence.

“You were over to see Norton, weren’t you, Bet?  How did you find him?” he asked abruptly.

“The doctor says he will soon be about again,” answered Betty.

Tom stroked his chin and gazed at her reflectively.

“Betty, I wish you wouldn’t go there again—­that’s a good girl!” he said tactfully, and as he conceived it, affectionately, even, paving the way for an exercise of whatever influence might be his, a point on which he had no very clear idea.  Betty glanced up quickly.

“Why, Tom, why shouldn’t I go there?” she demanded.

“It might set people gossiping.  I reckon there’s been pretty near enough talk about you and Charley Norton.  A young girl can’t be too careful.”  The planter’s tone was conciliatory in the extreme, he dared not risk a break by any open show of authority.