"Let me see!" There was a round red drop of blood at the finger's tip. "I would not have hurt you for worlds! How stupid! Let me--there!" He was wrapping her hand in his handkerchief and stanching the slight flow at the dainty pink point of her fingers, and blessing the pin, even if it did hurt. How small her hand had seemed, how white, how warm; he unwrapped the swathings and held it palm upwards, looking solicitously and wondering inanely which finger was hurt. The pink palm was unlined as a child's. Lawson eyed it swiftly; he had some idea of palmistry.
"Shall I read your future?" he asked gayly after one quick glance at the marriage cross on the soft flesh under her forefinger.
"Why, can you?" cried Frances, flushing a little at the question and a little that he should still be holding her hand.
"Suppah is raidy!" Susan, coming quietly to the door to beckon her mistress and ask advice about the serving of the meal, had come upon the tableau. She broke it up.
Lawson moved toward the door and Frances stood, uncertainty on her face. "You have just come--" she began.
"Oh no, not long after I saw you!" he was quick to retort. "What were you doing without your father?"
Lawson put his hand on the door-knob. He saw he must go, but Susan, impatient at even this delay and so furious at what her eyes had seen that she scarce heeded what she was doing clanged out the supper bell and then poked her turbaned head through the portière. "Ef yuh don't come on, eberyting will be col'!" she declared.
Frances, angered through and through at the old woman's interference, tilted her chin high. "Come out and have supper with me, Mr. Lawson," she said, "it's lonesome by myself!"
"Fo' Gawd!" muttered Susan, knowing she had overreached herself and brought about worse than she had tried to avert, "fo' Gawd!"
Susan, plate in hand, came slowly to the table where they waited. "I ain't gwine put it at de foot, Gawd knows," she told herself, "I'se gwine put it at de side, de lef' side too, an' I hopes to de Lawd he'll burn hisself agains' de coffee-pot; it's good and hot, I knows!"
Lawson was duly satisfied where he was; he could watch her hands, shaky a little at first, hovering over the queer-shaped silver pot of coffee and the low wide cream-jug and open sugar-bowl, and he listened delightedly to her questions as to his tastes; he could enjoy too, seeing the example of his hostess, the good food Susan had unwittingly prepared him.