She started slightly, and then stopped, with all her old agitation and
embarrassment. But, to his own surprise, he was also embarrassed and
even tongue-tied.

She spoke first.

"You were at church. I didn't quite know you in--in--these clothes."

In her own finery she had undergone such a change to Reddy's
consciousness that he, for the first time in their acquaintance, now
addressed her as on his own level, and as if she had no understanding of
his own feelings.

"Oh," he said, with easy bitterness, "OTHERS did, if you did not. They
all detected the 'head-waiter' at the Union Company's rancho. Even if I
had accepted your kindness in offering me a seat in your wagon it would
have made no difference." He was glad to put this construction on
his previous refusal, for in the new relations which seemed to be
established by their Sunday clothes he was obliged to soften the
churlishness of that refusal also.

"I don't think you'd look nice setting the table in kid gloves," she
said, glancing quickly at his finery as if accepting it as the real
issue; "but you can wear what you like at other times. I never found
fault with your working clothes."

There was such a pleasant suggestion in her emphasis that his ill-humor
softened. Her eyes wandered over the opposite grove, where her
unconscious parents had just disappeared.