“Ah, I am glad you do tell the truth sometimes!” said the girl, with a bright glance from her glorious eyes.
“You must be a witch or some sort of fairy,” Stuart declared suddenly, “for prevarication, let alone untruths, always fail when I meet you.”
He was watching her with intense earnestness, enjoying the sweet witchery of her beauty. For she was beautiful; her form was so slender and lithe; every limb, from the tiny feet in the rough country shoes, which could not hide their daintiness, to the small, delicately-shaped hands, browned and tanned as they were, spoke of grace and loveliness. Her head had a certain imperious carriage that made the simple cotton gown appear a queenly robe, and the face beneath the flapping sunbonnet was one to inthrall a sterner man than Stuart Crosbie. The complexion of pale cream white, which even the sun could not kiss to a warmer shade, the sweet, rosy mouth, the great wondrous eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes, and the mass of ruddy golden curls that twined about the brow and delicate throat were but a few of the attractions that Margery possessed. One of her greatest charms was the simplicity and unaffectedness of her manner; perhaps it was that as yet none had whispered flattery in her shell-like ear, none had tried to sweep away her girlish frankness and youthfulness by adulation and undue admiration. But Margery never seemed to think she possessed beauty, nor even that that beauty was such as a queen might sigh for. She found more pleasure in tossing the hay, romping with the children, or, in quieter moods, diving into her books, than in posing before her mirror; and she was quite unconscious of the exact meaning of Stuart Crosbie’s eyes, which filled with a fire of admiration and ecstasy whenever they rested on her.
“Now,” she said, lightly, turning her book round and round in her hands after they had been conversing for several minutes, “since I am a fairy, I shall get this question answered. Why did Mr. Stuart take such a long walk in the broiling sun which does affect him if he does not care a scrap about Farmer Bright’s crops?”
“Why?” echoed the young man. “Why, to meet you, Margery!”
“Oh, how kind of you!” she returned, quietly; then, looking up with a smile, she added, “Come now—I shall begin to doubt my power. What——”
“But that is the real downright, honest truth. I told Mrs. Morris it was to ask about the crops, but I tell you the truth.”
“And why could you not tell mother the truth,” she asked, quickly—“why not say you wanted to see me? She would have been honored at such a thought.”
Stuart Crosbie bit his lip. His brow clouded for a second, then he answered quietly:
“Yes, you are quite right, Margery. I ought to have said so. Well, never mind—I will next time. And now tell me what you have been doing all this age. What is that book?”