I never do," he retorted. She did not answer, but hummed a
little tune and looked up at the tree-tops.
Warren Smith appeared in the doorway. "Judge," he said, "will you step
inside? We need you."
Briscoe nodded and rose at once. As he reached the door, Minnie said in a
piercing whisper:
"It's hard to be sure about her, but I'm right; it's gratitude."
"There," he replied, chuckling, "I thought I shouldn't have the last
word." Minnie began to sing, and the judge, after standing in the doorway
till he was again summoned from within, slowly retired.
Briscoe had persisted in his own explanation of Helen's gaiety;
nevertheless he did not question his daughter's assumption that the young
lady was enjoying her career in Carlow. She was free as a bird to go and
come, and her duties and pleasures ran together in a happy excitement. Her
hands were full of work, but she sought and increased new tasks, and
performed them also. She came to Carlow as unused to the soil as was
Harkless on his arrival, and her educational equipment for the work was
far less than his; her experience, nothing. But both were native to the
State; and the genius of the American is adaptability, and both were
sprung from pioneers whose means of life depended on that quality.
There are, here and there, excrescent individuals who, through stock
decadence, or their inability to comprehend republican conditions, are not
assimilated by the body of the country; but many of these are imports,
while some are exports.
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