"Only that it will look so sad and unapproachable even when the sun shines like this; as if its feelings had been hurt and it could never pardon or forget."
The judge continued to gaze. He was being penetrated by a suspicion. This girl knew Minty Foster. Supposing—
But he had called on Miss Derwent, and she had verified Thinkright's description. It was her impression of muteness, pallor, sadness, which had decided the judge to drop his affairs and have a look at the farm. What did Edna mean? What did Thinkright mean? Was it a plot to work on his sympathies? This smiling maid with mischief in her eyes frolicking recklessly in the clumsy old rowboat was the opposite type from the cold, pale specimen he had braced himself to meet in the Basin path. She would have been suitably environed in its changeless sombre firs. This girl, with her length of limb and graceful breadth of shoulder, had greater affinity with the white birches delicately fluttering their light bright greens as they leaned eagerly toward the water and Sylvia.
"The Tide Mill hurt beyond pardon, eh?" he returned. "Well, possibly it didn't relish the epithets of the men who sank their money in it."
The flight of fancy was unprecedented for the speaker. He was sensible of unwonted excitement in a possibility.
His companion was still dimpling at the lean figure in the roomy frock coat and high hat.
Laura had been a small woman. The judge was considering that if his companion should rise she would equal or overtop his height.
Starved. Very needy. So Thinkright had put it. Nonsense. This riante dryad of the birches could be nothing to him.
"Shows a small disposition, though, after all these years," he added after the brief pause. "Don't you think so? Nursing injuries and bearing malice and all that sort of business?"
The smile died from Sylvia's face. She half averted it, and trailed her fingers through the quiet ripples. "Thinkright says so," she answered.