His meeting with Vincenza next morning was like a breath of scented air after a stifling room. She did not know of his wealth, she did not parade her beauty, she was not hunting a human bank. If it were a question of what were her feelings, how easily, how unerringly, it could be answered! For what she said came straight from her innocent heart, and could be accepted absolutely. She was truth itself.
While they sat together under a broad live-oak, with the turkeys settled down near by in the sun, he listened with keen pleasure to her naïve chatter and to the sturdy announcement that she was going to the city—soon, too, this with a blush, and that even now she was having a “tailor-suit” made for her journey.
“A tailor-suit!” thought Austin, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it. She seemed so fitted to the simple print dress and the broad sun-hat she was wearing.
The following day he breakfasted before the others and hurried off eagerly, carrying the gun. He had never fired it yet, but it served as an excellent excuse for his long rambles. When he reached the oak grove on the hillside, he leaned the weapon against a tree. Then he stretched himself out, his soft hat under his head.
Vincenza—in the last twenty-four hours, how often the thought of her had come to him! What a contrast this girl of the fields was to Dorothy Thorbum! How winsome, how unaffected. She was a little woman to be prized as a jewel by a fortunate man. How disinterested her companionship with him had been! She liked him solely for himself—with no knowledge, and, therefore, no thought, of the big stone house that would be a veritable palace of fairyland to a girl like her; with no thought of fine raiment, or of luxuries of any sort.
Something moved in the chaparral clump above him. He turned, and saw two small brown-feathered birds emerge.
“Quail!” he said under his breath. He reached for the gun, aimed quickly, and fired.
Instantly mingled cries went up: the frightened gobbling of grown turkeys, the pitiful cheeps of a young bird as it tumbled about in the grass, and, louder than these, the wailing plea of a girl—“Oh! oh! don’t shoot!”
Then, racing down upon him, came Vincenza, her hat gone, her dark hair flying, her face white with anxiety for her flock.
There he stood, red-handed, the gun in his grasp, the injured chick at his feet.