She was not without a healthy young woman's relish
for this sort of admiration; but Shade Buckheath's proposal came with so
little grace, in such almost sinister form, that she scarcely
recognized it.
"Yes, if we're going to wed," reiterated Buckheath sullenly. "I'm
willin' to have you."
Johnnie's tense, almost tragic manner relaxed. She laughed suddenly.
"I didn't know you was joking, Shade," she said good-humouredly. "I took
you to be in earnest. You'll have to excuse me."
"I am in earnest," Buckheath told her, almost fiercely. "I reckon I'm a
fool; but I want you. Any day"--he spoke with a curious, half-savage
reluctance--"any day you'll say the word, I'll take you."
His eyes, like his voice, were resentful, yet eager. He took off his hat
and wiped the perspiration from his brow, looking away from her now,
toward the road by which they had climbed.
Johnnie regarded him through her thick eyelashes, the smile still
lingering bright in her eyes. After all, it was only a rather unusual
kind of sweethearting, and not a case of it to touch her feelings.
"I'm mighty sorry," she said soberly, "but I ain't aimin' to wed any
man, fixed like I am. Mother and the children have to be looked after,
and I can't ask a man to do for 'em, so I have it to do myself."
"Of course I can't take your mother and the children," Buckheath
objected querulously, as though she had asked him to do so.
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