"It's going to be awfully hot to-day," Mrs. Wartrace, the widowed aunt, remarked. "I hope you are not going to hoe in the sun this morning."
"Huh!" Dixie sniffed, as she sat down at the end of the table and began to butter a hot biscuit, "and let the crab-grass and pussley weeds literally choke out the best stand of cotton I ever laid my eyes on. No, siree, not me. I'd hire hands, but all the niggers have gone to town where there are more back-doors to live at; no, there is nothing for me to do but to look out for number one. See here, you two women don't seem to be able to look ahead. I've paid for half of this farm in the last three years, and in two more I'll own it. It is a good thing as it stands, but when I'm plumb out of debt we'll take it easy and set back in the shade once in a while. Alf Henley is a keen trader and knows what values are, and he told me not long ago that he believed a railroad would head for Chester some day, and, if it comes, my land would sell for town lots. Let's let well enough alone and be thankful for the blessings we've got. That's right, Aunt Mandy, drain it to the dregs and I'll fill it again. I knew I'd hit it exactly right this morning by the color of it."
Breakfast was over, and Dixie, aided by the fumbling hands of her mother, was washing and drying the few dishes and putting them away in the safe with perforated tin doors, which was the chief piece of furniture in the room, when the front gate opened and closed with a metallic click of the latch, and a visitor hurried along the little gravelled walk to the front porch.
"It is that meddlesome Carrie Wade," Mrs. Wartrace looked into the kitchen to say. "She's got on a new muslin, and has come over to show it, even as early as this."
"I'm not going to stand at the door and knock like a stranger," the visitor cried out, as she entered the little front hallway and rustled back to the kitchen. "Hello, Dix; Martha Sims and me are invited to spend the day over at Treadwell's. You know the new lumber-camp is there, and there's some dandy fellows working at it. They are going to give a dance, an' told us to send Ned Jones over with his fiddle. Oh, we are going to have a rattling time. We agreed to get up early. It seems funny, don't it? It's been many a day since I saw the sun rise."
The speaker was a tall blonde about Dixie's age. She was thin, inclined to paleness, and had a nervous look.
Dixie was drying her hands on a dishcloth, and she turned upon the visitor, surveying her carefully from her rather worn shoes to the newer dress and gaudily flowered hat with its tinsel ornaments and flowing pink ribbons. She knew full well that her neighbor had come for the sole purpose of showing her finery, and was secretly gloating over her misfortune in having to remain behind, and yet she allowed this knowledge in no way to affect her demeanor.
"You'll have a glorious time," Dixie said. "It's going to be a fine day for a picnic and dance."
"How do you like my dress?" Miss Wade asked, turning round for the inspection.
"It's very pretty, and pink suits you," Dixie answered, touching one of the folds of the skirt.
"It's entirely too long in front," Mrs. Hart said, as she bent forward and squinted sidewise with quite a visible sneer. "You'd look powerful funny walking along kicking up the skirt behind. With a veil on nobody could tell whether you was going or coming. Take my word for it—that stuff'll fade, even in the sun. You won't get more than one or two wearings out of it."
"Oh, do you think so?" The blond face fell. "I was a little afraid of that myself, and maybe you are right about the fit behind, too."
"Mother doesn't know what she's talking about," Dixie said, with a reproachful glance at her parent, who frowningly hovered on the verge of another criticism. "It is the way you've put the flounce on, Carrie, that makes it look that way in front. Wait, let me pin it up."
"Pin it up, I say!" Mrs. Hart sniffed. "You'll never get it to look decent that way. Nothing but making the whole thing plumb over will do any good. You ought to have got you a new sash to go with the muslin; weak-eyed as I am, I can see the dirty, faded edges agin the new cloth. The two don't go together. In war-times it was considered excusable to botch things that way, but not in this day and time when all industrious folks can get what's needed."
Dixie looked up regretfully, and a flush of embarrassment climbed into her fine face as her mother, accompanied by her silent sister, swept stiffly from the room.
When Carrie Wade had left, after her by no means triumphant call, Dixie went to her mother, who stood in the yard under an apple-tree, still with a frown on her really gentle face.
"You oughtn't to have said all that, mother," Dixie said, as she leaned on the smooth handle of the hoe she was going to take to the field. "After all, she was in our house."
"And come in it like a yellow-fanged snake with its forked tongue fairly dripping with poison," was the ready retort. "She come to gloat over you as she always has since the day you cut her out of that young man. She knowed you were going to work at home to-day, and she had the littleness to traipse over here to try to make you feel like you was missing something awful grand. If I hadn't left the kitchen I wouldn't have stopped with what I said about her flimsy dress. I'd have told her that if she'd stay at home more, and keep the holes in her stockings darned, and her underclothes cleaner, she'd stand a better chance roping in some fool man. I'm plain and outspoken, and I resent sneaking hints and false grins as quick as I do slaps. I'm tired o' you doing the way you are, anyhow. I want you to be like the rest of the girls. What do we care about owning this farm. Her daddy can't buy a knitting-needle on time, and yet they live as well as anybody else, and she thinks she is a grade higher than the rest of us."
"Don't you let it bother you, Muttie," Dixie said, tenderly; indeed, she was always moved by a demonstration of her mother's love, and her eyes were moist as she put a caressing hand on the gray locks of the little woman. "We are going to see it through. When the farm is plumb paid for we'll make Carrie so sick with our fine doings she'll wish she was dead."
"It is mighty hard," the old lips quivered, and the gaunt, blue-veined hand was raised to the dim eyes. "I can't stand to see that girl going to places you can't go to. I simply can't, that's all."
"I could have gone, mother," Dixie remarked. "I didn't tell her, for I knew exactly what she would say, but Hank Bradley met me on the way home yesterday and offered to drive me over there. He says he knows all the lumber crowd well."
"Hank Bradley—did he want to take you?" cried Mrs. Hart, "and you wouldn't go?"
"I couldn't, mother. You know every girl that has ever kept company with him has been talked about. I don't like him. I can't stand him. He's a bad man, mother—a gambler, a drunkard, and an idler. He doesn't care for the characters he has ruined. He's fast running through the money his mother left him; he's no good."
"I don't know that you did exactly right," Mrs. Hart said, with the indecision and bad logic into which her ill-fortune sometimes drew her. "I know what he is well enough, but you are able to take care of yourself, and you lose so many chances by being so particular. He knows your true worth, and I've knowed men even as bad as he is to be reformed by loving a good girl."
"I ain't in the reforming business," Dixie laughed. "I'd rather fight crab-grass and pussley weeds, and I'm off now. You go back in the house and set down and don't talk about the picnic. I sha'n't even think about it. I never bother about anything when I get warmed up."
Without a word further the two parted. Mrs. Hart stood on the little porch, and Dixie crossed the stretch of green meadow-land and climbed over the rail-fence of her cotton-field. The long rows of succulent plants, as high as the girl's knees, seemed breathing, conscious things to which she was giving relief as she smoothly cut away the tenaciously encroaching weeds and deep-rooted grass, the heaviest bunches of which she took up and threshed against the hoe-handle