Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/204

 then she gave me a rose, with the same coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed her hand. I left her wilting in the big chair, staring hard into the fireplace that Clem had filled with summer green things.

When my fellow-chattel appeared next morning with my coffee, he was embarrassed. With guile he strove to be talkative about matters of no consequence. But this availed him not.

"Clem," I said frigidly, "tell me just what you said to Mrs. Lansdale about me."

He paltered, shifting on his feet, his brow contracted in perplexity, as if I had propounded some intricate trifle of the higher mathematics.

"Huh! Wha—what's that yo'-all is a-sayin', Mahstah Majah?"

"Stop that, now! I needn't tell you twice what I said. Out with it!"

"Well, seh, Mahstah Majah, of co'se, yo'-all tole me to fix it mah own way, an' Ah lay Ah 'd do it raghtly—an' so Miss Cahline is ve'y busy goin' th'oo th' rooms an spressin' huhse'f how grand evehthing suttinly do look an' so fothe an' so on, an' sh' ain't payin' much attention—Ah reckon sh' ain't huhd raghtly—"

"Clem—the Bible says, 'How forceful are right words!'"