"Once you fail—'tis talking,
Twice you fail—'tis mocking,
Thrice you fail—'tis shocking,
But a fool will ever play with fire."
Her voice was crudely loud, but so clear. Every tone was so justly true. The enunciation was faulty beyond any power of description, and at first it made him wince, albeit his own capacities for declamation were of no high order. Then her singing struck him as characteristic—good of its kind, but of a kind never classified. He had an instinct for novelty. The second time she sang the stanza, giving herself up with a sort of joyous abandon to the dance, for now she seemed hardly to hope to reach the peach, he was entranced with the picture she presented, the exquisite grace of her attitudes, the incomparable lightness and strength of her dancing, her beautiful, symmetrical form, and the strong sweet melody of her voice as it floated out so richly. He noted the contrast of her slender waist and limbs with the full throat—revealed by the bodice of the orange-tinted calico, the edges of which were turned in at the top for added coolness—the deep chest. With the vocal endowments the build assured the singer.
His interest was as impersonal as if she were indeed a feature of some Thespian exhibition. He had not thought how the scene must end—that if he moved she must descry him standing so near at hand in the road. And in fact he did not move—he was still motionless, spellbound, when a wider circuit of the tree brought him suddenly within her range of vision. She paused so abruptly as to jeopardise the equilibrium of the pail on her head and she lifted her hand to steady its profuse wealth of grape clusters, and thus she stood at gaze, her lips parted, her eyes dilated with astonishment.
He divined her sentiments at the moment of discovery, but he could not understand the facial expression that ensued. Her eyes narrowed with an inimical suggestion, watchful, expectant. Her red lips closed firmly. He had not before noticed how strong of contour was her chin, intimating resolution. He lifted his hat courteously, and waited for her to speak. She remained silent, and there was a moment of vacuum.
Then a sudden sound smote the stillness. A tremendous peal of thunder came from the mass of darkly purple clouds suspended above the mountains across the valley. As he instinctively turned his head, they were rent by a swift zigzag gleam of a sinister whiteness, and again the thunder pealed. The turmoils that had earlier convulsed the clouds had now taken definite direction. The wind was driving them hitherward across the valley, and for the first time in his life he heard the raindrops pattering down upon tree tops two thousand feet below him, while he stood high in the sunshine. One of the sudden mountain storms impended. In another moment, as he perceived, the torrents would be loosed upon them. He was arrayed to simulate prosperity; "out-at-elbows," even in a showman, is a confession of disaster. Had business been good he would have gone far less smart. He had a prudential consideration of shelter.
"Gee! There comes a corker!" he exclaimed. "Could I go to the house, lydy?"
He realised the incongruity of the address with this untutored peasant, but a sense of policy blended with his extravagant courtesy in its application. The "lady" gazed at him with that countenance of severe monition which he hardly understood.