The Man Thou Gavest | Page 6

wish you could forgive me."
Then slowly the head was raised and to Truedale's further consternation he saw that mirth, not anguish, had caused the shaking of those deceiving little shoulders.
"Oh! I see--you are laughing!" He tried to be indignant.
"Yes."
"At what?"
"Everything--you!"
"Thank you!" Then, like a response, something heretofore unknown and unsuspected in Truedale rose and overpowered him. His shyness and awkwardness melted before the warmth and glow of the conquering emotion. He got up and sat on the corner of the table nearest his shabby little guest, and looking straight into her bewitching eyes he joined her in a long, resounding laugh.
It was surrender, pure and simple.
"And now," he said at last, "you must stay and have a bite. I am about starved. And you?"
The girl grew sober.
"I'm--I'm always hungry," she admitted softly.
They drew the table close to the roaring fire, leaving doors and windows open to the crisp, sweet; morning air.
"We'll have a party!" Truedale announced. "I'll step over to Jim's cabin and bring the best he's got."
When he returned Nella-Rose had placed cups, saucers, and plates on the table.
"Do you--often have parties?" she asked.
"I never had one before. I'll have them, though, from now on if--if you will come!"
Truedale paused with his arms full of pitchers and platters of food, and held the girl with his admiring eyes.
"And you will let me come and see you--you and your sister and your father? I know all about you. White has explained--everything. He--"
Nella-Rose braced herself against the table and quietly and definitely outlined their future relations.
"No, you cannot come to see us-all. You don't know Marg. If she doesn't find things out, there won't be trouble; when she does find things out there's goin' t' be a right smart lot of trouble brewing!"
This was said with such comical seriousness that Truedale laughed again, but sobered instantly when he recalled the incident of the white bantam which Jim had so vividly portrayed.
"But you see," he replied, "I don't want to let you go after this first party, and never see you again!"
The girl shrugged her shoulders and apparently dismissed the matter. She sat down and, with charming abandon, began to eat. Presently Truedale, amused and interested, spoke again:
"It would be very unkind of you not to let me see you."
"I'm--thinking!" Nella-Rose drew her brows together and nibbled a bit of corn bread meditatively. Then--quite suddenly:
"I'm coming here!"
"You--you mean that?" Truedale flushed.
"Yes. And the big woods--you walk in them?"
"I certainly do."
"Sometimes--I am in the big woods."
"Where--specially?" Truedale was playing this new game with the foolish skill of the novice.
"There's a Hollow--where--" (Nella-Rose paused) "where the laurel tangle is like a jungle--"
Truedale broke in: "I know it! There's a little stream running through it, and--trails."
"Yes!" Nella-Rose leaned back and showed her white teeth alluringly.
"I--I should not--permit this!" For a moment Truedale broke through the thin ice of delight that was luring him to unknown danger and fell upon the solid rock of conservatism.
"Why?" The eyes, so tenderly innocent, confronted him appealingly. "There are nuts there and--and other things! You are just teasing; you'll let me--show you the way about?"
The girl was all child now and made Truedale ashamed to hold her to any absurd course that his standards acknowledged but that hers had never conceived.
"Of course. I'll be glad to have you for a guide. Jim White has no ideas about nuts and things--he goes to the woods to kill something; he's there now. I dare say mere are other things in the mountains besides--prey?"
Nella-Rose nodded.
"Let's sit by the fire!" she suddenly said. "I--I want to tell you--something, and then I must go."
The lack of shyness and reserve might so easily have become boldness--but they did not! The girl was like a creature of the wilds which, knowing no reason for fear, was revelling in heretofore unsuspected enjoyment. Truedale pulled the couch to the hearth for Nella-Rose, piled the pillows on one end and then seated himself on the stump of a tree which served as a settee.
"Now, then!" he said, keeping his eyes on his breezy little guest. "What have you got to tell me--before you go?"
"It's something that happened--long ago. You will not laugh if I tell you? You laugh right much."
"I? You think I laugh a good deal? Good Lord! Some folk think I don't laugh enough." He had his friends back home in mind, and somehow the memory steadied him for an instant.
"P'r'aps they-all don't know you as well as I do." This with amusing conviction.
"Perhaps they don't." Truedale was deadly solemn. "But go on, Nella-Rose. I promise not to laugh now."
"It was the beginning of--you!" The girl turned her eyes to the fire--she was quaintly demure. "At first when I saw you looking in that window, yonder, I was right scared."
Jim White's statement that Nella-Rose wasn't more than half