"What! What!" said Cousin Josey, detecting her absence from a seat at his side, that would have brought her face to face with Townsend. "My Lady-love desert me like that? Come back, little runaway, and see your Cousin Vance taste his first mouthful of a Wheatlands ham!"
Thus adjured, Eve could but take the seat indicated; and Vance, who had determined to be no longer oppressed by so small and pink a person, bestowed on her an openly admiring glance that angered her anew.
"We must leave you to Eve's mercies this morning, Mr. Townsend," observed their host, at the conclusion of the repast. "Carlyle and I have promised to ride over to the County Court to hear a case tried, and to call on the Judge, who is an old college chum of the Colonel's. We shall be home to dinner at two, and you young people must entertain each other until then."
"Could you not manage not to show so plainly what you feel?" asked Vance in his cousin's little ear, as they left the table. "Pray believe that I am not a party to the infliction put upon you."
They had strolled bareheaded out under the trees shading the lawn about the house.
"Shall we never have done quarrelling?" said Eve, wearily. "Just as I think I begin to feel kindly toward you, something happens, and I break down again."
"Were we not moderately successful last night, when I assumed to be somebody else?" he asked.
"Yes; that is better. I will treat you as I would any other man stopping here--any one not of your exalted class, I mean."
"That was a quite unnecessary taunt. But I will allow it to pass if you agree for to-day--until the gentlemen return--to treat me as you would Mr. Ralph Corbin, for example."
"What do you mean?" she asked, quickly. "Ralph is the dearest, most obliging cousin I have, and I impose upon him dreadfully. If he were here, I should begin by sending him indoors to fetch my hat and parasol from the hall rack, and a new magazine I left in the window-seat, and tell him to call the dogs to come with us--What! _you_ can't intend to condescend to wait upon a mere girl, a country cousin?"
He was off and back again with the articles demanded, showing no enmity in the smile offered with them to her acceptance. But he did not at once surrender the periodical, or until he had satisfied himself of the contents of the page held open by a marker of beaten silver.