“I—I haven’t joined yet. I’m not sure—but I’d like to do folks good some way, Steve.”
“My girlie, yer kin do it a better way than by larnin’ the evil fust yerself. It’s a almighty fine work them Lassies do. Maiden, but it ain’t fur the likes o’ you. Can’t yer be content wi’ doin’ one man good?”
Maiden glanced down the gully where Lou swung back in the saddle with the snake of the lash hissing round his head.
“He do need it,” she murmured.
Steve straightened, biting back a word on his lips.
“Maiden, yer a little caution,” he said. “There ain’t nuthin’ a fellow knows ’bout yer but as yer ain’t never twice alike. Well yer knowed as I wasn’t meanin’ Lou. But if so be as you does, Maiden———”
“There’s Crellin’s cart,” said Maiden. “I’m goin’ to run. An’ you needn’t chase me down to the bridge, ’cause it’d look undignified.”
Steve said more than one thing under his breath as Crellin’s strong hand helped her up. Then she turned on the high seat, and through the dusk her little handkerchief flapped out at him. He swung off his cap.
“Bless her!” he said. “She ain’t meanin’ all her nonsense, my girlie.”
As the cart rattled down the track by the gully. Maiden’s handkerchief blew out again.
