"No, I won't tell," David assured her. "But I'm sure you'll make up to Sally for having been mistaken about the pin."
"She's all you think of!" Pearl cried, then, sobbing wildly, she ran out the kitchen door.
"Guess I'd better not bother you any longer, or they'll be blaming me if dinner is late," David said casually, but he paused long enough to pat the little hand that was clenching the table.
Sally was so puzzled by the strangeness of the scene she had witnessed, so tormented by brief glimpses of something near the truth, so weak from reaction, so stirred by gratitude to David, that she was making poor headway with dinner when Clem Carson, who had not gone to church, came in from the barns, dressed in overalls in defiance of the day.
"Got a sick yearlin' out there," he grumbled. "A blue-ribbon heifer calf that Dave's grandpa persuaded me to buy. I don't believe in this blue-ribbon stock. Always delicate--got to be nursed like a baby. I give her a whopping dose of castor oil and she slobbered all over me."
He took the big black iron teakettle from the stove and filled the granite wash basin half full of the steaming water. As he lathered his hands until festoons of soap bubbles hung from them, he cocked an appraising eye at Sally, who was busily rolling pie crust on a yellow pine board.
"Dave been hanging around the kitchen this morning, ain't he?"
Sally's hands tightened on the rolling pin and her eyes fluttered guiltily as she answered, "Yes, sir."
"Better not encourage him, if you know which side your bread's buttered on," the farmer advised laconically. "I reckon you know by this time that Pearl's picked him out and that things is just about settled between 'em. Fine match, too. He'll own his granddad's place some day--next farm to this one, and the young folks will be mighty well fixed. I reckon Dave's pretty much like any other young whippersnapper--ready to cock an eye at any pretty girl that comes along, before he settles down, but it don't mean anything. Understand?"
"I reckon any fool could see that Pearl's mighty near the apple of my eye," Carson went on, as he dried his hands vigorously on the Sunday-fresh roller towel. "And if she took a notion that maybe some other girl from the orphanage would suit us better, why I don't know as I could do anything else but take you back. And I'd hate that. You're a nice, pretty little thing, real handy in the kitchen, but, yes sir, I'd have to tell the matron that you just didn't suit.... Well, I got to get back to that yearlin'."