"Give a dog a bad name, eh? You-all needn' be quite so bigoty now yo' fine friends have been at the same business."
He waved his hand towards the cabin, and Bob, in his turn, flushed as he shook hands with Melissa.
The girl gave scant greeting to Pressley. Her husband's new friendship with him was distasteful to her; it filled her with foreboding when she remembered his threats.
Yet there had been nothing definite of which she could complain to Bud since the day when Miss Carroll had caught Pink trying to kiss her. He had never been to the cabin since his rebuff, but she knew that he and Bud were constantly together, and this partnership in the hiring of the Baron's land was a culmination of their friendly relations.
"Ah don' see how ye c'n stan' him, nohow, Bud," she often said, and Bud as often replied,--
"Ah never did see anythin' like the prejudice o' women! They certainly ain' no doubt about yo' sex, M'lissy."
Pink bore his part in the present conversation with no trace of embarrassment. Indeed, there was an assertiveness in his bearing that reacted upon Melissa to produce extreme shyness. Neither cause nor effect escaped Morgan's shrewd black eyes.
"How's Mr. Baron?" asked Bud, between bites.
"Doing very well. He gets out on the porch every day now."
"Great luck he has," growled Pressley. "Yo' father never paid my fine when Ah was given mah choice between 'a hundred dollars or three months.'"
"My father likes to choose his friends," replied Bob, sternly. Melissa looked distressed.
"What's sauce fo' the goose ought to be sauce fo' the gander," argued the ex-moonshiner.
"It ain' fittin' fo' you-all to say anythin' ag'in' Dr. Morgan, whatever he may _se_-lect to do," asserted Bud, combatively, and Pink hastened to hedge.
"Ah 'low not. He certainly was white to me when Ah broke mah laig. 'N as fo' Mr. Baron, Ah always did like him, 'n this is a new tie between us. Now we're brothers."
He chuckled with a full appreciation of his insolence, for the story of von Rittenheim's downfall and its cause was well known throughout the country.
Melissa went white at the malignity of his tone. She turned to Bob with a question:
"Mrs. Carroll 'n Miss Sydney--are they wore to a frazzle takin' care o' him?"