“Oh, I will go instead,” cried Randal; “I really ought not to let you go on this errand, for,” with a quizzical smile, “you are ‘company,’ you know.”
“Not very formal ‘company.’ You ought to see to the placing of that new boiler in the gin-house,--and I have nothing to do. Yes,” continued Adrian, still regarding the approach of the skiff, “that is your man Job, and he can take this horse back to the stable.”
He dismounted hastily and throwing the reins to Randal, he ran lightly up the slope of the levee. He paused on the summit to wave his hand and call out cheerily, “Ta, ta--see you later,” and then he threw himself in the skiff, which was dancing on the floods close below, the boatman holding it by the painter as he stood on the exterior slope of the embankment.
The river was at flood height and running with tremendous force. But for the aid of the current Adrian’s strength plying the oars would have made scant speed. It was only a short time before he sighted the little riverside shanty which no longer showed its stilts, but sat on the water as flush with the surface as a swimming duck. Adrian was able from his seat between the rowlocks to knock on the closed door without rising. There was no response for a few minutes, although the building was obviously inhabited, the sluggish smoke coiling up from the stove-pipe into this dull day of late winter or early spring, whichever season might be credited with its surly disaffection. A child’s voice within suddenly babbled forth, and but for this Adrian fancied a feint of absence might have been attempted. With a slight motion of the oars he kept the skiff in place at the entrance, and at length the door slowly opened and the frowsy, copper-tinted hair and freckled face of Jessy Jane was thrust forth.
She was one of that type of woman to whom without any approach to moral delinquency a handsome man is always an object of supreme twittering interest, however remote of station and indifferent of temperament; however crusty or contemptuous. That he should obviously concern himself in no wise with her existence did not in any degree minimize the intensity of her personal absorption in him. Her face, sullen and lowering, took on a bland and mollifying expression, and with a fancied recognition of the rower she broke forth with a high, ecstatic chirp: