"
"Do you think that makes them of the same class?" asked Stoddard
impatiently. "I should say the presumption was still greater the other
way. I was not alluding to social classes."
"You're so odd," murmured Lydia Sessions. "These mountaineers are all
alike."
* * * * *
The village road was a smother of white dust; the weeds beside it
drooped powdered heads; evil odours reeked through the little place; but
when Shade and Johnnie had passed its confines, the air from the
mountains greeted them sweetly; the dusty white road gave place to
springy leaf-mould, mixed with tiny, sharp stones. A young moon rode low
in the west. The tank-a-tank of cowbells sounded from homing animals. Up
in the dusky Gap, whip-poor-wills were beginning to call.
"I'm glad I came," said Johnnie, pushing the hair off her hot forehead.
She was speaking to herself, aware that Buckheath paid little attention,
but walked in silence a step ahead, twisting a little branch of
sassafras in his fingers. The spicy odour of the bark was afterward
associated in Johnnie's mind with what he had then to say.
"Johnnie," he began, facing around and barring her way, when they were
finally alone together between the trees, "do you remember the last time
you and me was on this piece of road here--do you?"
He had intended to remind her of the evening she came to Cottonville:
but instead, recollection built for her once more the picture of that
slope bathed in Sabbath sunshine.
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