The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

								

of a law-court."
Brown little Ola Derf, sitting slightly apart from the others
braiding pine needles into a ring, looked up suddenly. A woman
at the spring below scooping a drink for a fat child, lifted a long
drab face and sighted in the same direction. This was the Widow
Griever, elder sister of Lance Cleaverage. Sour censor of public
morals that she was, Roxy Griever considered eighteen-year-old
Callista the young woman perfect, and found her own brother quite
unworthy of the paragon. Only the central figure of the group
appeared to take no notice, while the girls about her, at the
mere mention of Lance, all fluttered and resettled themselves
with a certain vague air of expectancy.
"You boys ought to be ashamed of yo'se'fs," Roxy Griever
reproved. Then apart to young Fuson, "Callista's got more sense
than to pay any attention to such a light-headed somebody as
that fool brother o' mine. Let me tell you, Callista Gentry has
more sense than any of you [5] men persons give her credit for.
She's a serious-minded gal. You Mary Ann Marthy, you quit
treadin' over yo' Sunday shoes." And she raised her small daughter
a bit from the pathway and set her down sharply, as though to
indicate the correct manner of walking in Sunday foot-gear.
The infant of the triple name--her Uncle Lance said she sounded
like twins if she didn't look it--put up a mutinous red mouth
and lowered from under flaxen brows.
"Me wants to hear 'em fuss," she muttered as she progressed
reluctantly toward the little church on the hill-side.
"Well, you ain't goin' to hear 'em fuss, and they ain't goin' to
fuss, and you couldn't hear 'em if they did," admonished her
mother lucidly, accelerating the infant's pace from the rear.
"The big spring ain't no place for chillen like you, and old
women like me. Let the light-minded and the ungodly do about in
such ef they will. You and me is goin' into the church house and
set thar till preachin'."
Fathers and mothers were herding their broods of lesser children
in, but boys and girls of older growth, young men and women of
an age to be thinking of mating, strolled by twos or sat on the
bank above the big spring that supplied the baptismal pool of
Brush Arbor church. Callista Gentry was wearing a new print
frock--and looking quite unconscious of the fact. [6]
"That ain't no five cent lawn," whispered Ola Derf enviously,
as she eyed it from afar. The Derf girl was an outsider at most
gatherings, and particularly so at church affairs. Everybody
knew she came to Brush Arbor only on a chance of seeing Lance
Cleaverage.
"Thar comes Lance now!" announced Fuson, and then winked at his
companions.
Callista never raised her glance, nor did the even tenor of her
speech falter, though something told the onlooker that she was
aware. A swift slight contraction of plumage like that of a hawk
suddenly on the alert, a richer glow on the softly oval cheek, a