As it is with many who wear bluntness like a cloak, Donald possessed a deep-seated appreciation of the beautiful, without being capable of expressing it. But now he vaguely realized that here, where he would last have looked for it, he had blundered upon a child whom Mother Nature had designed lovingly and with painstaking care, perhaps in order to satisfy herself that, in the bustle of creation which nowadays left her little time for attention to fine detail, her hands had not wholly lost the cunning which was theirs when the world was young and women were few and fair.
Her face had the qualities of a sweet wild-flower, delicate of form yet hardy enough to stand up under the stress of a storm. A critic might have declared the sensitive mouth a shade too broad for the tapering lines which formed the firmly rounded chin; he might have said that the upper lip, against which its companion was now tightly pressed to check its trembling, was too short for classic beauty; but he would hardly have been able to find a flaw in the molding of the straight, slender nose or the broad forehead, or the cheeks which curved as symmetrically as the petals of a damask rose, or—if he were human—with the faint shadows at the corners of the lips which were not dimples, but fascinatingly suggested them. But, above all, it was the child's eyes, heavy with a sudden rush of unshed tears that merely added to their appealing charm, which left the strongest impression on the man. They were remarkable eyes, long of lash and of a deep blue with limpid purple shadows and golden highlights.
Her form, untrammelled by confining clothing and bending naturally, was slender and lithesome, but full of curves which told that the bud of childhood was just beginning to open into the blossom of early maturity—about fifteen or sixteen years old, Donald guessed her to be.
At her feet lay an overturned kettle the contents from which, a simple stew, was sending up a cloud of steam from the rough floor, and explained the reason for the misty eyes and tenderly nursed ankle.
The whole picture was graven on his mind in a single glance; but, the next instant the sunniest, most appealing of smiles broke through the girl's pain-drawn tears.
"Yo' ... yo' looked so funny a-fallin' over thet thar dawg, an' a-rollin' on the floor," her words bubbled forth.
"I'm glad that you have something to laugh about, but dev ... deucedly sorry that I made you burn yourself, child," answered Donald, awkwardly. "It must hurt like the ... the mischief," he added, as he stepped forward to examine the injury with a quick return to his professional manner.
"Wall, hit do burn, kinder. But taint nothin'." She sniffed bravely, but a tear overflowed its reservoir and made a channel through a smudge on her cheek.
"Well, I happen to be a doctor—when I'm not on a vacation—so I can do a little toward repairing the damage I caused." He was already unfastening the small first-aid kit which experience had taught him never to go without.
"Taint nothin', sir, really. I'll jest put some lard on hit, an' ..." began the girl, timidly backing away.