Page:Cather--One of ours.djvu/122

108 gance were the subject of perpetual argument, but went to and from school every day with the air of one whose position is assured. Her musicianship gave her a kind of authority in Frankfort.

Enid explained the purpose of their call. “Claude has got out his old sleigh, and we’ve come to take you for a ride. Perhaps Bayliss will go, too?”

Bayliss said he guessed he would, though Claude knew there was nothing he hated so much as being out in the cold. Gladys ran upstairs to put on a warm dress, and Enid accompanied her, leaving Mrs. Farmer to make agreeable conversation between her two incompatible guests.

“Bayliss was just telling us how you lost your hogs in the storm, Claude. What a pity!” she said sympathetically. Yes, Claude thought, Bayliss wouldn’t be at all reticent about that incident!

“I suppose there was really no way to save them,” Mrs. Farmer went on in her polite way; her voice was low and round, like her daughter’s, different from the high, tight Western voice. “So I hope you don’t let yourself worry about it.”

“No, I don’t worry about anything as dead as those hogs were. What’s the use?” Claude asked boldly.

“That’s right,” murmured Mrs. Farmer, rocking a little in her chair. “Such things will happen sometimes, and we ought not to take them too hard. It isn’t as if a person had been hurt, is it?”

Claude shook himself and tried to respond to her cordiality, and to the shabby comfort of her long parlour, so evidently doing its best to be attractive to her friends. There weren’t four steady legs on any of the stuffed chairs or little folding