"I can't be mistaken," he said elaborately. "This is Miss Dorcas Lee."
Dorcas put her foot on the step and seated herself beside him. Then, surprised at his success, because she had looked to him like a proud person, though in a working-gown, he began a wandering apology for having failed to help her in. Meantime he touched up the beautiful sorrel, and when they began to fly along the road, and the sorrel's golden mane was tossing, Dorcas had a brief smiling concurrence with Alida. To speed like that was perhaps worth the company of Clayton Rand. He was talking to her, and she answered him demurely, with a dignity not reassuring from one of her large type and regal air. But presently he began, by some inner cleverness (for he had a way with him), to tell her stories about horses, and Dorcas listened, wide-eyed with pleasure. The way to the knoll was very short, and there she had to stop in the midst of a racing story that had the movement of the race itself, and bid him leave her. This time he remembered his manners, and leaped out to help her gallantly.
"Miss Dorcas," he called her back after her pretty thanks, "I suppose—I don't half dare to ask you—but you like horses. Just let me take you over to the Country Club to-morrow, and we can see the racing."
For the space of a second, Dorcas gazed at the toe of her patched working-boots. She was thinking, in a confused tangle, of Alida and Newell, and wondering if she had any clothes to wear. Then she lifted her head quickly in a resolution that looked like triumph.
"Thank you," she said, with a shyness very charming in one of her large type; "I should be happy to."
"Thank you," said Clayton, jumping into the wagon. "I'll be along about half-past one."
All that day Dorcas bent over the pea-vines and listened to her thoughts. There were other pickers, but she had no words for them, even when they sat down together for their luncheon, nor for Newell himself, coming at night to take her home.
"You're real tired, I guess," he said, as he left her at the gate.
Dorcas flashed a sudden smile at him. It was all mirth and mischief.