“Then you’re like Solomon; you can’t understand the ways of women!” She laughed as she handed him the lunch-box.
Her calm efficiency puzzled him. Lately he was discovering so many undreamed of qualities in this lively friend of his childhood. He was beginning to feel some of the wonder those people must have felt whose children played with pebbles that were one day discovered to be priceless uncut diamonds. Until that day she had found him prostrate in her moccasin woods he had thought of her as just Amanda Reist, a nice, jolly girl with a quick temper if you tried her too hard and a quick tongue to express it, but a good comrade and a pleasant companion if you treated her fairly.
Then his attitude had undergone a change. After that day of his great unhappiness he thought of her as a woman, staunch, courageous, yet gentle and feminine, one who had faith in her old friend, who could comfort a man when he was downcast and help him raise his head again. A wonderful woman she was! One who loved pretty clothes and things modern and yet appreciated the charm of the old-fashioned, and seemed to dovetail perfectly into the plain grooves of her people and his with their quaint old dress and houses and manners. A woman, too, who had an intense love for the great outdoors. Not the shallow, pretentious love that would call forth gushing rhapsodies about moonlight or sunsets or the spectacular alone in nature, but a sincere, deep-rooted love that shone in her eyes as she stooped to see more plainly the tracery of veins in a fallen leaf and moved her to gentle speech to the birds, butterflies and woodland creatures as though they could understand and answer.
As they walked down the country road he looked at her. He had a way of noticing women’s clothes and had become an observant judge of their becomingness. In her growing-up days Amanda had been frequently angered by his frank, unsolicited remarks about the colors she wore--this blue was off color for her red hair, or that golden brown was just the thing. Later she grew accustomed to his remarks and rather expected them. They still disconcerted her at times, but she had long ago ceased to grow angry about them.
“That green’s the color for you to-day,” he said, as they went along. “Do you know, I’ve often thought I’d like to see you in a black gown and a string of real jade beads around your neck.”
“Jade! Was there ever a red head who didn’t wish she had a string of jade beads?”
“You’d be great!”
“So would the price,” she told him, laughing. “A string of real jade would cost as much as a complete outfit of clothes I wear.”
“Then you should have black hair and cheap coral ones would do.”
“Why, Martin,” she said in surprise, “you are studying color combinations, aren’t you?”