At first Betty had sought to adapt herself to his somewhat
peculiar scheme of life, but Tom had begged her not to regard
him, his movements from hour to hour were cloaked in uncertainty.
The man who had to overlook the labor of eighty or ninety field
hands was the worst sort of a slave himself; the niggers knew
when they could sit down to a meal; he never did.
But for all his avoidance of Betty, he in reality kept the
closest kind of a watch on her movements, and when he learned
that she had visited Charley Norton--George, the groom, was the
channel through which this information reached him--he was both
scandalized and disturbed. He felt the situation demanded some
sort of a protest.
"Isn't it just hell the way a woman can worry you?" he lamented,
as he hurried up the path from the barns to the house. He found
Betty at supper.
"I thought I'd have a cup of tea with you, Bet--what else have
you that's good?" he inquired genially, as he dropped into a
chair.
"That was nice of you; we don't see very much of each other, do
we, Tom?" said Betty pleasantly.
Mr. Ware twisted his features, on which middle age had rested an
untender hand, into a smile.
"When a man undertakes to manage a place like Belle Plain his
work's laid out for him, Betty, and an old fellow like me is
pretty apt to go one of two ways; either he takes to hard living
to keep himself in trim, or he pampers himself soft."
"But you aren't old, Tom!"
"I wish I were sure of seeing forty-five or even forty-eight
again--but I'm not," said Tom.
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