At first he used to go over occasionally to see Vashti
and carry her little presents, as he had done at school; but he soon found
that it was not the same thing. He was always received coolly, and shortly
he was given to understand that he was not wanted there, and in time
Vashti herself showed that she was not the same she had been to him before.
Thus the young fellow was thrown back on himself, and the hostility
between the two cabins was as great as ever.
He spent much of his time in the woods, for the Stanley place
was small at best, only a score or so of acres, and mostly covered with pines,
and Little Darby was but a poor hand at working with a hoe --
their only farm implement. He was, however, an unerring shot,
with an eye like a hawk to find a squirrel flat on top of the grayest limb
of the tallest hickory in the woods, or a hare in her bed
among the brownest broomsedge in the county, and he knew the habits
of fish and bird and animal as if he had created them; and though he could not
or would not handle a hoe, he was the best hand at an axe "in the stump",
in the district, and Mrs. Stanley was kept in game if not in meal.
The Millses dilated on his worthlessness, and Vashti, grown to be
a slender slip of a girl with very bright eyes and a little nose,
was loudest against him in public; though rumor said she had fallen afoul
of her youngest brother and boxed his jaws for seconding something
she had said of him.
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