“You kin sell me ter Marse Minor--but Lawd, Lawd, you cyarn mek mammy leave off whuppin' me. You cyarn do dat widout you 'uz a real ole marster hese'f.”
“I reckon I can,” said Champe, indignantly. “I'd just like to see her lay hands on you again. I can make mammy leave off whipping him, can't I, Betty?”
But Betty, with a toss of her head, took her revenge.
“'Tain't so long since yo' mammy whipped you,” she rejoined. “An' I reckon 'tain't so long since you needed it.”
As she stood there, a spirited little figure, in a patch of faint sunshine, her hair threw a halo of red gold about her head. When she smiled--and she smiled now, saucily enough--her eyes had a trick of narrowing until they became mere beams of light between her lashes. Her eyes would smile, though her lips were as prim as a preacher's.
Virginia gave a timid pull at Betty's frock. “Champe's goin' home with us,” she said, “his uncle told him to--You're goin' home with us, ain't you, Champe?”
“I ain't goin' home,” responded Betty, jerking from Virginia's grasp. She stood warm yet resolute in the middle of the road, her bonnet swinging in her hands. “I ain't goin' home,” she repeated.
Turning his back squarely upon her, Champe broke into a whistle of unconcern. “You'd just better come along,” he called over his shoulder as he started off. “You'd just better come along, or you'll catch it.”
“I ain't comin',” answered Betty, defiantly, and as they passed away kicking the dust before them, she swung her bonnet hard, and spoke aloud to herself. “I ain't comin',” she said stubbornly.
The distance lengthened; the three small figures passed the wheat field, stopped for an instant to gather green apples that had fallen from a stray apple tree, and at last slowly dwindled into the white streak of the road. She was alone on the deserted turnpike.
For a moment she hesitated, caught her breath, and even took three steps on the homeward way; then turning suddenly she ran rapidly in the opposite direction. Over the deepening shadows she sped as lightly as a hare.
At the end of a half mile, when her breath came in little pants, she stopped with a nervous start and looked about her. The loneliness seemed drawing closer like a mist, and the cry of a whip-poor-will from the little stream in the meadow sent frightened thrills, like needles, through her limbs.