Main-Travelled Roads | Page 8

as they ate with small
grace and no material loss of time.
Will remained silent through it all, eating in marked contrast to the
others, using his fork instead of his knife in eating his potato,'and
drinking his tea from his cup rather than from his saucer- "finickies"
which did not escape the notice of the girl nor the. sharp eyes of the
other workmen.
"See that? That's the way we do down to the sem! See? Fork for pie in
yer right hand! Hey? I can't do it. Watch me."
When Agnes leaned over to say, "Won't you have some more tea,
Will?" they nudged each other and grinned. "Aha! What did I tell you?"
Agnes saw at last that for some reason Will didn't want her to show her
regard for him, that be was ashamed of it in some way, and she was
wounded. To cover it up, she resorted to the feminine device of smiling
and chatting with the others. She asked Ed if he wouldn't have another
piece of pie.
"I will-with a fork, please."
"This is 'bout the only place you can use a fork," said Bill Young,
anticipating a laugh by his own broad grin.
"Oh, that's too old," said Shep Watson. "Don't drag that out agin. A
man that'll eat seven taters-"
"Shows who docs the work."

"Yes, with his jaws," put in Jim Wheelock, the driver. "If you'd put in a
little more work with soap 'n' water before comin' in to dinner, it 'ud be
a religious idee," said David.
"It ain't healthy to wash."
"Well, you'll live forever, then."
"He ain't washed his face sence I knew 'im."
"Oh, that's a little too tought! He washes once a week," said Ed Kinney.
"Back of his ears?" inquired David, who was munching a doughnut, his
black eyes twinkling with fun.
"What's the cause of it?"
"Dade says she won't kiss 'im if he don't." Everybody roared.
"Good fer Dade! I wouldn't if I was in her place."
Wheelock gripped a chicken leg imperturbably, and left it bare as a
toothpick with one or two bites at it. His face shone in two clean
sections around his nose and mouth. Behind his ears the dirt lay
undisturbed. The grease on his hands could not be washed off.
Will began to suffer now because Agnes treated the other fellows too
well. With a lover's exacting jealousy, he wanted her in some way to
hide their tenderness from the rest, but to show her indifference to men
like Young and Kinney. He didn't stop to inquire of himself the justice
of such a demand, nor just how it was to be done. He only insisted she
ought to do it.
He rose and left the table at the end of his dinner, without having
spoken to her, without even a tender, significant glance, and he knew,
too, that she was troubled and hurt. But he was suffering. It seemed as
if he had lost something sweet, lost it irrecoverably.
He noticed Ed Kinney and Bill Young were the last to come out, just

before the machine started up again after dinner, and he saw them
pause outside the threshold and laugh back at Agnes standing in the
doorway. Why couldn't she keep those fellows at a distance, not go out
of her way to bandy jokes with them?
Some way the elation of the morning was gone. He worked on
doggedly now, without looking up, without listening to the leaves,
without seeing the sunlighted clouds. Of course he didn't think that she
meant anything by it, but it irritated him and made him unhappy. She
gave herself too freely.
Toward the middle of the afternoon the machine stopped for a time for
some repairing; and while Will lay on his stack in the bright yellow
sunshine, shelling wheat in his hands and listening to the wind in the
oaks, he heard his name and her name mentioned on the other side of
the machine, where the measuring box stood. He listened.
"She's pretty sweet on him, ain't she? Did yeh notus how she stood
around over him?"
"Yes; an' did yeh see him when she passed the cup o' tea down over his
shoulder?"
Will got up, white with wrath as they laughed.
"Some way he didn't seem to enjoy it as I would. I wish she'd reach her
arm over my neck that way."
Will walked around the machine, and came on the group lying on the
chaff near the straw pile.
"Say, I want you fellers to understand that I won't have any more of this
talk. I won't have it."
There was a dead silence. Then Bill Young rose up.
"What yeh goen' to do about Ut?" be sneered.
"I'm going to