Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/223

 "Don't worry, Ma," Edith assured her dryly.

Ben, however, looked anything but the light-hearted wooer as he untied his roll of blankets from the saddle-horn and threw them inside the stockade.

"I'm a grub-liner now," he announced grimly by way of greeting.

"You don't have to ride no farther than here, honey-dumplin'." Mrs. Blakely's was the caressing tone of a new mother-in-law.

Ben looked slightly startled at the unusual appellation.

"What happened?" Edith guessed something of the truth from his moody eyes.

He replied curtly:

"Fired."

"T-ts-ts-ts!" Mrs. Blakely wagged her head with proper sympathy, then cried gaily: "You won't starve, my boy! There's a slab of swine-buzzum in the pork-barrel, and we ain't shuck the bottom of the meal-sack yet. Why, honey-dumplin',"—she laid a motherly hand upon his arm, and Ben's alarm increased perceptibly—"you can take yoah little stake and go in the cattle business with pap."