"Not very."

She gave him his chair against the wooden pillar, and watched him as he tilted back and balanced himself on its back legs. She saw something new and disturbed in his face and manner. It was as if the bit of outside life he had seen had left temporary traces upon him. She wondered very much how it had impressed him and what he was thinking about.

And after a short time he told her.

"Ye must be lonesome," he said, "arter stayin' down thar. It's nat'ral. A body don't know until they see it theirselves. It's gay thar. Lord, yes! it's gay, an' what suits young folks is to be gay."

"Some of the people who were there did not think it was gay," Louisiana said, a little listlessly. "They were used to gayer places and they often called it dull, but it seemed very gay to me."

"I shouldn't want it no gayer, myself," he returned, seriously. "Not if I was young folks. Thar must hev bin three hundred on 'em in thet thar dinin'-room. The names o' the vittles writ down on paper to pick an' choose from, an' fifty or sixty waiters flyin' round. An' the dressin'! I sot an' watched 'em as they come in. I sot an' watched 'em all day. Thar was a heap o' cur'osities in the way of dressin' I never seen before. I went into the dancin'-room at night, too, an' sot thar a spell an' watched 'em. They played a play. Some on 'em put little caps an' aperns on, an' rosettes an' fixin's. They sorter danced in it, an' they hed music while they was doin' it. It was purty, too, if a body could hev follered it out."

"It is a dance they call the German," said Louisiana, remembering with a pang the first night she had seen it, as she sat at her new friend's side.

"German, is it?" he said, with evident satisfaction at making the discovery. "Waal now, I ain't surprised. It hed a kinder Dutch look to me—kinder Dutch an' furrin."

Just then Nancy announced that his supper was ready, and he went in, but on the threshold he stopped and spoke again:

"Them folks as was here," he said, "they'd gone. They started the next mornin' arter they was here. They live up North somewhars, an' they've went thar."

After he had gone in, Louisiana sat still for a little while. The moon was rising and she watched it until it climbed above the tree-tops and shone bright and clear. Then one desperate little sob broke from her—only one, for she choked the next in its birth, and got up and turned toward the house and the room in which the kerosene lamp burned on the supper table.

"I'll go an' talk to him," she said. "He likes to have me with him, and it will be better than sitting here."

 

She went in and sat near him, resting her elbows upon the table and her chin on her hands, and tried to begin to talk. But it was not very easy. She found that she had a tendency to fall back in long silent pauses, in which she simply looked at him with sad, tender eyes.

"I stopped at Casey's as I came on," he said, at last. "Thet thar was one thing as made me late.