The manager did not at first recognise the new star that had arisen in the firmament of the Street Fair, and this was no great wonder. Clotilda Pinnott was standing quite isolated near the intersection of one of the streets with the public square. Near her was the great waggon which had been thriftily utilised to take advantage of the excursion, laden with an immense number of fresh splint baskets presumably for sale; some were hanging all along the sides; others protruded from the white hood at the back; still larger ones were glimpsed through the aperture of the front. One of the team of red-and-white oxen was yet afoot, steadily chewing his cud; the other, unmindful of the diagonal tilt of the yoke which he had thus pulled awry, had lain down on the ground and sleepily eyed the square, with no apparent perception in his dull bovine mind that its aspect was more populous and animated than he had beheld it of yore.
Some half dozen of the dogs had seen fit to accompany this jaunting abroad of the family, and naturally had furnished their own transportation. The pace at which the ox-team had travelled had by no means taxed their brisk energies, but the day was nearing the noon-tide, the September sun was hot, and they too had seated themselves, several under the shade of the waggon, and thence with lolling tongues and small hot eyes they gazed at the commotion, their intentness of observation broken now and then by sudden snaps at flies, and once one, with an air of indignant interruption, dislocated every rule of canine symmetry in the twist he gave his anatomy to get his teeth to bear on the fleas that tormented him. Two evidently had some joke between them, for without warning they occasionally rushed jocosely at each other, the bigger rolling the smaller over and over and tickling and biting him, humorously growling the while, till he whimpered hysterically aloud.
But the girl—Lloyd saw recognition in her eyes which fixed his attention; then he paused to stare wonderingly. "Why, what on earth have you done to yourself?" he broke out in blunt amazement.
Ah, never, never could he have recognised the classic grape-laden canephora of the orchard in the figure that stood before him. Here, here was true rusticity—the other a dream, a poem, some materialised strain from the oaten reed of Theocritus. He had spoken to her then with the deference that befitted the personified poetry of her presence. He now was not intentionally rude, but he was stern, plain, determined. The artistic interests of the promised "turn" were slaughtered.
"How'd ever you make yourself such a jay?" he cried in dismay.
Then he began to perceive in added surprise that she fancied herself arrayed to strike the beholder with admiration and destroy the peace of every man who looked upon her. She stared at him with an amazement that matched his own, so comprehensive that at first it gave no room for anger. As the gradual realisation of objection began to redden her cheeks he made haste to call some good-natured euphemism to his aid, for he would not willingly hurt her feelings.
"Don't you know, child, that 'beauty unadorned is adorned the most'?" he said. "Why didn't you wear those togs you had on when I saw you up in the mountains?"
"Them r-a-ags?" she drawled contemptuously, and with a complacent hand she adjusted the folds of her coarse brown and green mottled muslin, that had at intervals a small egg-shaped pattern in glaring white. It stood out from her heels like a board, so stiffly was it starched. A row of big black beads was around her throat. A yellow sunbonnet, lined with blue, hid all the grace of her head and hair and showed only a moon-like contour of face, and he wondered that he had not before noticed her freckles. And then, worst of all, her shoes. For now her feet were encased in thick red yarn stockings and the stiffest of brogans, several sizes too large.
Lloyd could scarcely stem the flood of despair that surged about him, and the struggle was the more desperate as he perceived how far afield was her complacent mental attitude from any constraint of comprehension. Could he ever make her understand?
"You can't dance in them soap-boxes," he said didactically. "Them shoes won't bend. You can't do nothing but hop—and no bloke is going to pay a red to see a lydy hop. Why didn't you wear the old slippers you had on the other day?"