Stoddard. I saw him yesterday evening when I was
coming down the Ridge with Shade."
"But did you know 'bout him? Say--Johnnie Consadine--turn yourself round
from that old loom and answer me, I was goin' a-past the door, and when
I ketched sight o' you and him settin' there talkin' as if you'd knowed
each other all your lives, why you could have--could have knocked me
down with a feather."
Johnnie sat up on her heels and turned a laughing face across her
shoulder.
"I don't see any reason to want to knock you down with anything," she
evaded the direct issue. "Go 'long, Mandy, or you won't have time to eat
your dinner. Tell Aunt Mavity to send me just a biscuit and a piece
of meat."
"Good land, Johnnie Consadine, but you're quare!" exclaimed Mandy,
staring with bulging light eyes. "If it was me I'd be all in a tremble
yet--and there you sit and talk about meat and bread!"
Johnnie did not think it necessary to explain that the tremor of that
conversation with Stoddard had indeed lasted through her entire morning.
"There was nothing to tremble about," she remarked with surface calm.
"He'd never seen a pink moccasin flower, and I gave him the one I had
and told him where it grew."
"Well, he wasn't looking at no moccasin flower when I seed him," Mandy
persisted. "He was lookin' at you. He jest eyed you as if you was Miss
Lydia Sessions herself--more so, if anything.
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