Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny,
was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire
attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners.
"You wouldn't really go," he said aloud, half consciously.
The girl frowned in an effort of concentration, gazing into the thin
light of the dying fire and two watery tallow dips. Her coarsely spun
dress, coloured with sassafras bark and darker than the yellow hickory
stain, drew about her fine shoulders and full, plastic breast. "I'd like
it," she repeated; "but afterward. There is father--"
She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of
Dan Hesa; Dan was as strong as himself, if heavier; a personable young
man. He would make a good husband. But that, he added, was in the
future; Dan Hesa apparently didn't want to marry Fanny to-morrow, that
week. Meanwhile a trip with him to the headwaters of a creek would not
injure her in the least. His contempt of a world petty and iron-bound in
endless pretence, fanning his smouldering and sullen resentment in
general, flamed out in a determination to take her with him if possible.
It would conclusively define, state, his attitude toward "men herding
like cattle." He did not stop to consider what it might define for Fanny
Gilkan.
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