"
She was tremulously delighted. She sensed the nearest thing to an
out-and-out proposal which had ever sung in her ears. She leaned
forward eagerly, her hands clasped to keep them from trembling. She
was sixteen, he eighteen . . . and she had his assurance of a moment
ago that they were no longer just "kids." And then and there their
so-long-delayed quarrel began. Just at the wrong time, after the
time-honored fashion of quarrels. He was ready to twine the vine about
the veranda posts of the house on the knoll where the spring and the
big trees were, she was ready to plant the fig-tree. Then she had
glimpsed something just too funny for anything in the idea of Elmer
raising pigs . . . for he had gone on to that, sagely anticipating a
high market another season . . . and she laughed at him and all
unintentionally wounded his feelings. In a flash he was Black Bill
again and on his mettle, ready with the quick retort stung from him;
and she, parrying his thrust, was at once Fluff, the mercuric. The
spat was on . . . they would call it a spat to-morrow if to-morrow were
kind to them . . . and Elmer's ranch and house and cow, horse and pigs
were laughed to scorn.
Florrie departed leaving her cruellest laughter to ring in his ears.
This might have been a repetition of any one of a dozen episodes
familiar to them both, but never, perhaps, had Elmer's ears burned so
or Florrie's heart so disturbed her with its beating.
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