Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/136

 "If she's got half as much spunk as I think she has, she'll pack up her duds and scoot," he said.

Bride and groom arrived, in the family buckboard with a sack of oats tied on behind, before supper was over. It was early dusk, the homecoming was proclaimed well in advance by the wheels among the stones at the creek crossing, and witnessed by two who went to the window to see. Tippie was not moved by any curiosity at all. He remained at the table, feasting on canned green beans.

Mrs. Peck turned the team over to her new mate, snatched the suitcase that was wedged in between the sack of oats and the back of the seat, and came hobbling toward the kitchen door, cramped in the legs from her thirty-five miles' ride. Rawlins and Edith hurried back to the table, where they were decorously seated when the mistress of the manse opened the door.

Mrs. Peck burst in on them, in a manner, as if she wanted to come so suddenly that the conventional things which people say, and do not always mean, on such occasions would have no time to pop out at her. To make doubly sure, she began to talk as soon as her red face struck the lamplight.

"Well, you beat me home, after all," she said, addressing Tippie, no word of greeting for her niece, not any coyness or bashfulness about her such as might be expected of even a well-seasoned bride.

"Um-m-m," said Tippie, his mouth full of beans.

Which made no difference in his form of expression at all. It would have been the same from an empty mouth. He was not interested in these goings off and