Pegeen had been quite truthful. “Sometimes they did show.” For an instant a vision of the polite and embarrassed bachelor clergyman in Pisgah, of the perturbed ladies’ aid society and the agitated Valley censors caused Archibald’s lips to twitch nervously, but he smothered the smile at its birth and stretched himself out luxuriously on the moss at the neatly booted feet.
Even in riding breeches and boots she was more utterly without self-consciousness, more simply, adorably feminine than any other woman in muslin and blue ribbons. It would be blind virtue that could call the Smiling Lady immodest.
“I could have loved that witch,” he said lazily, closing his eyes the better to feel the moss beneath his head and the breeze on his cheeks and to hear the drip, drip of water trickling among the rocks, and then opening them hastily not to lose sight of the face against the background of rugged bark.
“I’ve felt that way myself,” the girl confessed.—“A woman who would come away up here into the quiet places and settle down with the forest at her back and the spring near her door and the whole Valley spread out before her eyes!
“It’s a heavenly sweet place to sit on a summer’s day, weaving spells, isn’t it? They say she was old and ugly, but I think that was only when she went down among the Valley folk. Up here she must have been young and beautiful and she smiled a wonderful smile as she worked enchantment. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s believable,” admitted the man who was watching her face. It was easy, astonishingly easy, for him to believe in a witch who was young and beautiful and who sat on a hilltop smiling and working enchantment.
They idled the afternoon away with talk and laughter and drowsy silences; and being very humanly hungry in the midst of all the glamour, they finally ate Ellen’s six sandwiches and sighed for more.
“The next time,” said the Smiling Lady, “we will bring a knapsack luncheon and make tea.”
“The next time!” He liked the promise in it.
She rose to her knees and leaning over the spring cupped her hands and drank.