There were transformations, too, in the house of Spicer South. Windows had been cut, and lamps adopted. It was no longer so crudely a pioneer abode. While they waited for dinner, a girl lightly crossed the stile, and came up to the house. Adrienne met her at the door, while Samson and Horton stood back, waiting. Suddenly, Miss Lescott halted and regarded the newcomer in surprise. It was the same girl she had seen, yet a different girl. Her hair no longer fell in tangled masses. Her feet were no longer bare. Her dress, though simple, was charming, and, when she spoke, her English had dropped its half-illiterate peculiarities, though the voice still held its bird-like melody.
"Oh, Samson," cried Adrienne, "you two have been deceiving me! Sally, you were making up, dressing the part back there, and letting me patronize you."
Sally's laughter broke from her throat in a musical peal, but it still held the note of shyness, and it was Samson who spoke.
"I made the others ride on, and I got Sally to meet you just as she was when I left her to go East." He spoke with a touch of the mountaineer's over-sensitive pride. "I wanted you first to see my people, not as they are going to be, but as they were. I wanted you to know how proud I am of them—just that way."
That evening, the four of them walked together over to the cabin of the Widow Miller. At the stile, Adrienne Lescott turned to the girl, and said:
"I suppose this place is preempted. I'm going to take Wilfred down there by the creek, and leave you two alone."
Sally protested with mountain hospitality, but even under the moon she once more colored adorably.
Adrienne turned up the collar of her sweater around her throat, and, when she and the man who had waited, stood leaning on the rail of the footbridge, she laid a hand on his arm.
"Has the water flowed by my mill, Wilfred?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" His voice trembled.