Carson came striding out of the corn. David, feet planted rather far apart, looked as if he were braced for attack, and the farmer, after an involuntary shrinking toward the shelter of the corn, advanced again, an apologetic smile on his brown face.
"Reckon I spoke hasty," he conceded, "but Jim said he seen you two young-uns sneaking off into the corn and it got my dander up. I'm responsible to the orphanage for Sally, and I don't aim to have her going back in disgrace. Better get back to the house, Sally, and go to bed, seeing as how you've got to be up at half-past four in the morning. You stay back a minute, Dave. I want to have a little talk with you."
"I'm taking Sally to the house, Mr. Carson," David said grimly.
On the walk back to the house there was no opportunity for David to reassure the frightened, trembling girl, for Carson plowed doggedly along behind them as they walked single file between the rows of corn. When they reached the kitchen, where Mrs. Carson was setting great pans of yeast bread to rise on the back of the range, Sally ran to the stairs, not pausing for a good-night.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, while she was sitting on the edge of her cot-bed, she heard David's firm step on the back stairs, and knew that he had cut short the farmer's "little talk" with him. Reckless of consequences she slipped out of her door, which she had left ajar, and crept along the dark hall to David's door.
He did not see her at first, for she was only a faint blur in the dark, but at her whispered "David!" he paused, his hands groping for hers.
"It's all right, honey," he whispered. "I told him point-blank if he sent you back to the Home I'd leave, too. And that will hold him, because he can't do without me at this busy season. He couldn't get another hand right now for love or money, and he knows it. Go to sleep now, and don't worry."
The next morning at breakfast it was plainly evident that David had said one or two other things to Clem Carson, and that he in turn had passed them on to Pearl. For Pearl's eyes bore traces of tears shed during the night, and the high color of anger burned in her plump cheeks. Carson's anger and chagrin at losing all his hopes of David as a son-in-law and of acquiring, through his marriage to Pearl, the neighboring farm for his daughter, expressed itself in heavy "joshing," each word tipped with venom: