Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/157

 short winter day was over and the twilight blurred the shades of brown before their eyes.

It was strange and unnatural how little conversation went on among these four young people as they stood working together day after day. Judith would have liked to talk and often wondered why she and the others did not talk more. Sometimes she made a deliberate attempt to start conversation; but it always ended in nothing. There hung over them always a heavy air of self-consciousness and constraint that smothered all natural spontaneity. There were several private and personal reasons for this. Jerry continued to nurse the old grievance of the stolen tobacco plants, and added to it the suspicion that Luke was getting away with some of the cream of his crop. He could steal a good many bunches without the possibility of their being missed, and Jerry opined that he was just the man to do it.

The minds of Hat and Luke dwelt largely upon the subject of money. They had one all-consuming desire in common, which was to get their crop stripped and on the market before the price fell. In this at least they were at one; aside from it their thoughts and desires were their own. Hat meditated upon what she had been reading in her latest copy of the "Farm Wife's Friend," mused upon her wrongs and Luke's shortcomings, and toyed gingerly, yet deliciously with thoughts of intrigue. Sometimes she lifted her black eyes to Jerry and saw that he was strong, healthy and handsome, then forgot him the next moment in thoughts of some imaginary lover.

Luke, in the short intervals of thoughts of gain, thought about the fox that he had hunted the night before and the good swigs of whiskey that he had had at Bob Crupper's out of a gallon jug stopped with a corncob. And he remembered how good the whiskey had made him feel. Not infrequently his mind wandered from these thoughts to dally with meditations more vague but more attractive. Sometimes when Judith lifted her head she met his little blue eyes fixed upon her with a look, the meaning of which was unmistakable. Instantly he would withdraw his eyes and work furiously at his task.