“The invitation is tempting,” she hesitated; “but I’ve got just oodles of work.”
“What! on Saturday?”
“Saturday is my really busy day, don’t you know. I guess I could get off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith.”
He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her inclinations lay was quite clear to him.
‚ÄúIt‚ÅÝ‚Äîit would be decidedly the proper thing,‚Äù he murmured, ‚Äúand we could, of course, invite Miss‚ÅÝ‚Äî‚Äù
She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:
“It’s quite unnecessary; she’ll think I have simply gone for a long walk.” And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the perfume of the pines.
Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed. Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a pretty girl gay with newfound companionship‚ÅÝ‚Äîall this is apt to make a morning worth remembering.
They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts of past years’ cotton standing straggling and weatherworn. Long, straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming, struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.
“They’re beginning to plough up the land for the cotton-crop,” he explained.