Mr. Langworthy's serious half-perfunctory manner here took on an appearance of interest. "Yes--I've bin thinkin' that way. Thar's a young woman helpin' in the kitchen ez might do, though I'm not certain, and I ain't lettin' on anything as yet. You might take a look at her, Rosalie,--I orter say Mrs. Byers ez is,--and kinder size her up, and gimme the result. It's still wantin' seven minutes o' schedule time afore the stage goes, and--if you ain't wantin' more food"--delicately, as became a landord--"and ain't got anythin' else to do, it might pass the time."
Strange as it may seem, Mrs. Byers here displayed an equal animation in her fresh face as she rose promptly to her feet and began to rearrange her dust cloak around her buxom figure. "I don't mind, Abner," she said, "and I don't think that Mr. Byers would mind either;" then seeing Langworthy hesitating at the latter unexpected suggestion, she added confidently, "and I wouldn't mind even if he did, for I'm sure if I don't know the kind o' woman you'd be likely to need, I don't know who would. Only last week I was sayin' like that to Mr. Byers"--
"To Mr. Byers?" said Abner, with some surprise.
"Yes--to him. I said, 'We've been married three years, Constantine, and ef I don't know by this time what kind o' woman you need now--and might need in future--why, thar ain't much use in matrimony.'"
"You was always wise, Rosalie," said Abner, with reminiscent appreciation.
"I was always there, Abner," returned Mrs. Byers, with a complacent show of dimples, which she, however, chastened into that resignation which seemed characteristic of the pair. "Let's see your 'intended'--as might be."
Thus supported, Mr. Langworthy led Mrs. Byers into the hall through a crowd of loungers, into a smaller hall, and there opened the door of the kitchen. It was a large room, whose windows were half darkened by the encompassing pines which still pressed around the house on the scantily cleared site. A number of men and women, among them a Chinaman and a negro, were engaged in washing dishes and other culinary duties; and beside the window stood a young blonde girl, who was wiping a tin pan which she was also using to hide a burst of laughter evidently caused by the abrupt entrance of her employer. A quantity of fluffy hair and part of a white, bared arm were nevertheless visible outside the disk, and Mrs. Byers gathered from the direction of Mr. Langworthy's eyes, assisted by a slight nudge from his elbow, that this was the selected fair one.
His feeble explanatory introduction, addressed to the occupants generally, "Just showing the house to Mrs.--er--Dusenberry," convinced her that the circumstances of his having been divorced he had not yet confided to the young woman. As he turned almost immediately away, Mrs. Byers in following him managed to get a better look at the girl, as she was exchanging some facetious remark to a neighbor. Mr. Langworthy did not speak until they had reached the deserted dining-room again.
"Well?" he said briefly, glancing at the clock, "what did ye think o' Mary Ellen?"
To any ordinary observer the girl in question would have seemed the least fitted in age, sobriety of deportment, and administrative capacity to fill the situation thus proposed for her, but Mrs.
Byers was not an ordinary observer, and her auditor was not an ordinary listener.
"She's older than she gives herself out to be," said Mrs. Byers tentatively, "and them kitten ways don't amount to much."
Mr. Langworthy nodded. Had Mrs. Byers discovered a homicidal tendency in Mary Ellen he would have been equally unmoved.
"She don't handsome much," continued Mrs. Byers musingly, "but"--
"I never was keen on good looks in a woman, Rosalie. You know that!" Mrs. Byers received the equivocal remark unemotionally, and returned to the subject.
"Well!" she said contemplatively, "I should think you could make her suit."
Mr. Langworthy nodded with resigned toleration of all that might have influenced her judgment and his own. "I was wantin' a fa'r-minded opinion, Rosalie, and you happened along jest in time. Kin I put up anythin' in the way of food for ye?" he added, as a stir outside and the words "All aboard!" proclaimed the departing of the stage-coach,--"an orange or a hunk o' gingerbread, freshly baked?"
"Thank ye kindly, Abner, but I sha'n't be usin' anythin' afore supper," responded Mrs. Byers, as they passed out into the veranda beside the waiting coach.
Mr. Langworthy helped her to her seat. "Ef you're passin' this way ag'in"--he hesitated delicately.
"I'll drop in, or I reckon Mr. Byers might, he havin' business along the road," returned Mrs. Byers with a cheerful nod, as the coach rolled away and the landlord of the Big Flume Hotel reentered his house.
For the next three weeks, however, it did not appear that Mr. Langworthy was in any hurry to act upon the advice of his former wife. His relations to Mary Ellen Budd were characterized by his usual tolerance to his employees' failings,--which in Mary Ellen's case included many "breakages,"--but were not marked by the invasion of any warmer feeling, or a desire for confidences. The only perceptible divergence from his regular habits was a disposition to be on the veranda at the arrival of the stage-coach, and when his duties permitted this, a cautious survey of his female guests at the beginning of dinner. This probably led to his more or less ignoring any peculiarities in his masculine patrons or their claims to his personal attention. Particularly so, in the case of a red-bearded man, in a long linen duster, both heavily freighted with the red dust of the stage road, which seemed to have invaded his very eyes as he watched the landlord closely. Towards the close of the dinner, when Abner, accompanied by a negro waiter after his usual custom, passed down each side of the long table, collecting payment for the meal, the stranger looked up. "You air the landlord of this hotel, I reckon?"
"I am," said Abner tolerantly.
"I'd like a word or two with ye."