But the charm was not all in his own eye: not all the magic endowment of first love. The mountain preacher's daughter had escaped those slovenly habits of backwoods life that inevitably coarsen. Her beauty had slender strength and flower freshness.
Now she stood holding with one hand to the gnarled branch of a dogwood sapling. A blue sunbonnet falling back from her head left the abundance of her hair bared to the light so that it shimmered between brown and gold.
She was perhaps sixteen and her heavily lashed eyes were brownish amber and just now full of a mirthful sparkle.
"Ye seemed ter be studyin' about somethin' almighty hard," she insisted teasingly. "I thought for a minute that mebbe ye'd done growed thar."
Turner Stacy smiled again as he looked at her. In his eyes was unveiled and honest worship.
"I was a'studyin' about you, Blossom. I don't know no way ter do that save almighty hard. Didn't ye hear me whoop?"
The girl's head nodded.
"Why didn't ye answer me?"
"I aimed ter slip up on ye, if I could, Turner, but I didn't low it would be so plumb easy.—You made believe that yore ears could hear the grass a-growin'."
The youth took a sudden step toward her and stood close, so close that her breath touched his face fragrantly as she looked up with a witching mockery in her eyes. His heart fluttered with the clamor of impulse to seize her in his arms, but his half-lifted hands dropped to his sides.