At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the ring in her fingers. "I reckoned it was you," she said, with an affected briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket. "There it is!"But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the opening of the door the sunbonnet had fallen back like a buggy top, disclosing for the first time the head and shoulders of the wearer. She was not a child, but a smart young woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his embarrassment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason whatever for having believed her otherwise.
"I hope I didn't interrupt your singing," he said awkwardly.
It was only one o' mammy's camp-meetin' songs," said the girl.
"Your mother? Is she in?" he asked, glancing past the girl into the kitchen.
"'Tain't mother--she's dead. Mammy's our old nurse. She's gone to Jimtown, and taken my duds to get some new ones fitted to me.
These are some o' mother's."
This accounted for her strange appearance; but Fleming noticed that the girl's manner had not the slightest consciousness of their unbecomingness, nor of the charms of face and figure they had marred.
She looked at him curiously. "Hev you got religion?""Well, no!" said Fleming, laughing; "I'm afraid not.""Dad hez--he's got it pow'ful."
"Is that the reason he don't like miners?" asked Fleming.
"'Take not to yourself the mammon of unrighteousness,'" said the girl, with the confident air of repeating a lesson. "That's what the Book says.""But I read the Bible, too," replied the young man.
"Dad says, 'The letter killeth'!" said the girl sententiously.
Fleming looked at the trophies nailed on the walls with a vague wonder if this peculiar Scriptural destructiveness had anything to do with his skill as a marksman. The girl followed his eye.
"Dad's a mighty hunter afore the Lord."
"What does he do with these skins?"
"Trades 'em off for grub and fixin's. But he don't believe in trottin' round in the mud for gold.""Don't you suppose these animals would have preferred it if he had?
Gold hunting takes nothing from anybody."
The girl stared at him, and then, to his great surprise, laughed instead of being angry. It was a very fascinating laugh in her imperfectly nourished pale face, and her little teeth revealed the bluish milky whiteness of pips of young Indian corn.
"Wot yer lookin' at?" she asked frankly.
"You," he replied, with equal frankness.
"It's them duds," she said, looking down at her dress; "I reckon Iain't got the hang o' 'em"
Yet there was not the slightest tone of embarrassment or even coquetry in her manner, as with both hands she tried to gather in the loose folds around her waist.
"Let me help you," he said gravely.
She lifted up her arms with childlike simplicity and backed toward him as he stepped behind her, drew in the folds, and pinned them around what proved a very small waist indeed. Then he untied the apron, took it off, folded it in half, and retied its curtailed proportions around the waist. "It does feel a heap easier," she said, with a little shiver of satisfaction, as she lifted her round cheek, and the tail of her blue eyes with their brown lashes, over her shoulder. It was a tempting moment--but Jack felt that the whole race of gold hunters was on trial just then, and was adamant!
Perhaps he was a gentle fellow at heart, too.
"I could loop up that dress also, if I had more pins," he remarked tentatively. Jack had sisters of his own.
The pins were forthcoming. In this operation--a kind of festooning--the girl's petticoat, a piece of common washed-out blue flannel, as pale as her eyes, but of the commonest material, became visible, but without fear or reproach to either.
"There, that looks more tidy," said Jack, critically surveying his work and a little of the small ankles revealed. The girl also examined it carefully by its reflection on the surface of the saucepan. "Looks a little like a chiny girl, don't it?"Jack would have resented this, thinking she meant a Chinese, until he saw her pointing to a cheap crockery ornament, representing a Dutch shepherdess, on the shelf. There was some resemblance.
"You beat mammy out o' sight!" she exclaimed gleefully. "It will jest set her clear crazy when she sees me.""Then you had better say you did it yourself," said Fleming.
"Why?" asked the girl, suddenly opening her eyes on him with relentless frankness.
"You said your father didn't like miners, and he mightn't like your lending your pan to me.""I'm more afraid o' lyin' than o' dad," she said with an elevation of moral sentiment that was, however, slightly weakened by the addition, "Mammy'll say anything I'll tell her to say.""Well, good-by," said Fleming, extending his hand.
"Ye didn't tell me what luck ye had with the pan," she said, delaying taking his hand.
Fleming shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, my usual luck,--nothing," he returned, with a smile.
"Ye seem to keer more for gettin' yer old ring back than for any luck," she continued. "I reckon you ain't much o' a miner.""I'm afraid not."
"Ye didn't say wot yer name was, in case dad wants to know.""I don't think he will want to; but it's John Fleming."She took his hand. "You didn't tell me yours," he said, holding the little red fingers, "in case I wanted to know."It pleased her to consider the rejoinder intensely witty. She showed all her little teeth, threw away his hand, and said:--"G' long with ye, Mr. Fleming. It's Tinka"--"Tinker?"
"Yes; short for Katinka,--Katinka Jallinger.""Good-by, Miss Jallinger."
"Good-by. Dad's name is Henry Boone Jallinger, of Kentucky, ef ye was ever askin'.""Thank you."
He turned away as she swiftly re-entered the house. As he walked away, he half expected to hear her voice uplifted again in the camp-meeting chant, but he was disappointed. When he reached the top of the hill he turned and looked back at the cabin.
