Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/101

 devil if he liked. Quite a joke; damned funny, for a fact, when a man looked at it that way.

Eudora came out to take a squint down the road, ostensibly; more than likely with the first and greater purpose of displaying herself in her proper garb, which she had assumed while Simpson stood speculating at the gate over many things. It was refreshing to behold the transformation, for no woman is made to look well, even the homeliest and roughest of them, in man's unlovely dress.

She had put on a checked something, very becoming to her, perhaps gingham, maybe something else. Tom Simpson, although from Manchester, was not learned in fabrics, being a tanner's son. Whatever it was it suited her admirably, and gave her a girlish grace which the baggy trousers, boots and all, had suggested, rather than revealed. She gave Simpson a broad, questioning, but altogether timid grin, as if she had come out on probation and stood doubtful of his approval.

"Good!" said he. "Very-very good."

He admired her frankly, a smile in his eyes, but his lips as hard-set as if they never had been broken in to bend. She was a comely brown lass, taller by a hand, it appeared, for her girlish dress, which was daringly short for that conventional age, reaching only to the tops of her buttoned shoes.

"When I work around picking up bones a dress is in the way," she explained.

"Just so," said he, full absolution for her masquerade in his warm friendly tone.

Her excitement over the recovery of her horse had