Out of the open neck of the blouse her deeply tanned throat rose like a bronze column; the roses in her cheeks and on her lips relieved the sun-darkened skin. Her hair was in two great plaits and it was evident that she seldom troubled about a hat. She was lithe, graceful as she could be, and bubbling over with good health if not good spirits.
And this was a morning–after the rain–to make even a lachrymose person lively. The smell of all growing things was in the nostrils–the warmth of the sun lapped one about like a mantle–it was a beautiful, beautiful day,–one to be remembered.
Wyn shouted and started running down the hill. Polly heard her, turned to see who it might be who called, and recognizing her friend, set out to meet her quite as eagerly.
“Oh, Miss Wynifred!” cried the boatman’s daughter.
“Polly Jolly! This is Frank Cameron.” She kissed Polly warmly. “How fine you look, Polly! Tell me! will all we girls look as healthy and be as strong as you are, by the autumn? You’re a picture!”
“A pretty shabby one, I fear, Miss Wyn,” protested Polly, yet smiling. “I am in the very oldest clothes I have, for there is much dirty work to be done around here. We have hardly got ready for the summer yet. Father has been so lame.”
“And you must introduce me to your father, Polly,” Wyn said, quickly. “We have something for him to do–if he will be so kind.”
“All you need to do is to say what it is, Wynifred,” responded Polly, warmly. “If either of us can do anything for you we will only be too glad.”
The three girls walked to the spot where Mr. Jarley was engaged upon his boat. He was not at all the sort of a person whom the girls from town had expected to see. The boatmen and woodsmen who sometimes drifted into Denton were rough characters. This man, after being ten years and more in the woods, savored little of the rough life he had followed.
He was a small man, very neat in his suit of brown overalls, with grizzled hair, a short-cropped gray mustache, and without color in his face save the coat of tan his out-of-door life had given him.