but the girl left hers untouched where they lay. He ate silently,
staring at the water below him, nor did the little girl turn her
eyes his way, for in the last few minutes some subtle change in
their relations had taken place, and both were equally surprised
and mystified. Finally, the lad ventured a sidewise glance at her
beneath the brim of his hat and met a shy, appealing glance once
more. At once he felt aggrieved and resentful and turned sullen.

"He throwed it back in yo' face," he said. "You oughtn't to 'a'
done it."

Little Mavis made no answer.

"You're nothin' but a gal, an' nobody'll hold nothin' agin you,
but with my mammy a Honeycutt an' me a-livin' on the Honeycutt
side, you mought 'a' got me into trouble with my own folks." The
girl knew how Jason had been teased and taunted and his life made
miserable up and down the Honeycutt creek, and her brown face grew
wistful and her chin quivered.

"I jes' couldn't he'p it, Jason," she said weakly, and the little
man threw up his hands with a gesture that spoke his hopelessness
over her sex in general, and at the same time an ungracious
acceptance of the terrible calamity she had perhaps left dangling
over his head. He clicked the blade of his Barlow knife and rose.

"We better be movin' now," he said, with a resumption of his old
authority, and pulling in the line and winding it about the cane
pole, he handed it to her and started back up the spur with Mavis
trailing after, his obedient shadow once more.