Such was my exceedingly original and extremely interesting greeting to Beryl Drane this morning. I arrived at the house at eight o'clock, found, as I thought, no one astir, and was preparing to knock when I discovered the young lady diligently clipping roses from a hedge near the back. It is not often that I descend to sheer banality, but I can offer no excuse for my opening remark as I came up over the grass behind her. She was a little startled. She turned quickly with a short "Oh!" and looked at me curiously. Somehow I did not like the look. It was possessive, in a way; intimate, as though we shared a secret, or something like that. She was dressed in a polka dot brown gingham, and had on an old bonnet whose projecting hood softened those lines which seemed to shriek of the things which made them. A low collar encircled her firm neck snugly. She wore leather half mitts, had a pair of shears in one hand, and from the elbow of her other arm hung a wicker basket over half filled with voluptuously red, dew-bright roses. She regarded me with that subtly smiling, upward glance which coquettes have, and in that morning air, with the flowers, under the shielding bonnet, she was pretty. She was too adroit to overdo the pose. It lasted scarcely two ticks from a grandfather's clock, then she smiled frankly, deftly looped the shears on a finger of her left hand, and held out her arm.
"I'm so glad to see you!" she said, winningly, and for the soul of me I could not help but feel my heart grow warmer in response to her tone. Ah, little sibyl! You have conjured more than one man's mind into deadly rashness, but you have paid, little moth with the soot-spotted wings!
"Are you?" I replied, surprisedly, as I grasped her grippy, slender hand and uncovered.
"Sure!... Don't you suppose Hebron is a trifle monotonous to me after the fleshpots of Egypt?"
"I had thought you would be—not angry, but displeased and disgusted with me that I had not come sooner."
"Oh! I have learned to make allowances for men!" she retorted, airily, with a toss of her head and a half pout; "and I'd have no respect for a man who'd have to be kicked away from a woman's feet. I've seen that kind. I supposed you would come when it suited your inclination."
She deliberately turned to the hedge again and tiptoed to grasp a heavy-headed bloom which seemed to have dropped asleep, drugged by its own perfume. She could not reach it.
"Let me," I said, and stepping forward, caught the thorn-set spray and pulled it toward her. The action made a little shower of water drops to patter on her upturned face, and a single rich-hued petal became displaced, drifted gently down, and actually lodged in the crevice of her slightly parted lips. Both laughed at the incident, for it was unusual.
"You shall have this one," she said, when she had clipped it, "from me."
I felt foolish, in a way, as she came close to me, fumbling here and there about her waist and the bosom of her dress.