When Vincenza appeared, driving the laziest gobbler before her, Austin rose. “Out early with your turkeys, I see,” he began. “You’re Miss Vincenza. Mrs. Thorburn has spoken of you. I’m staying at High Court for a few days.”
She had been standing very still while he talked, modestly watching him. Now, she smiled frankly, and nodded. “Yes, I know Mrs. Thorburn,” she said. “All the time, ladies and gentlemen come from the city to visit her. Sometimes I see them—I go up to the house to take a turkey, maybe, and then I see them on the porch.”
She moved away, following the flock, and he walked with her. They went slowly, accommodating themselves to the vagaries of the leading hens, whose slender chicks, forever cheeping shrilly, ran on and on in a little brown, eager brood.
“Isn’t the morning beautiful!” he said. “I live in the city, you know, and never see the sun come up.”
“I always see it,” she answered. “I drive the turkeys out early. They are in a coop at night, for the coyotes would like to eat them. When they get loose, oh, they walk and walk. They walk my feet off!” She shook her head in mock despair.
They paused now, the foremost turkeys having stopped to explore a manzanita thicket. Austin took a closer look at her than he had had before, his wonder growing over her delicate beauty. Never had he seen its equal. And yet she seemed unconscious of it, and had none of the smirking and simpering and obvious showing-off of her prettiness that marred most girls. Then, for some reason, there rose up before him a certain, doll-like face, pretty and petulant, but distinguished by eyes that were purposefully eloquent.
The hazel pair at hand were watching the valley. Austin looked and saw a horseman threading the lane by the creek. At that great distance, the horse looked to him scarcely more than a rabbit in size.
Vincenza’s face lighted as she looked. “Ah!” she exclaimed presently; “it is Guido!” And shaping her slim hands to form a mouth-trumpet, she sent down a long, clear halloo.
The horseman reined sharply and, taking off his hat, waved it about his head. Then he rode on, with a trail of dust rising like smoke behind him.
Between the galloping horseman and the hill, two people on foot were moving slowly. Austin studied them a moment. One was a woman, in a white dress, the other a man—Heaton, surely, for there was no mistaking that broad sombrero. But who was the girl?