“As day from night,” she echoed, and went on after a moment, her girlish visions shining in her eyes:—
“He will be a man, at least,” she said slowly, “a man with a faith to fight for—to live for—to make him noble. He may be a beggar by the roadside, but he will be a beggar with dreams. He will be forever travelling to some great end—some clear purpose.” The last words came so faintly that he bent nearer to hear. A deep flush swept to her forehead, and she turned from him to the fire. These were things that she had hidden even from Virginia.
But as he looked steadily down upon her, something of her own pure fervour was in his face. Her vivid beauty rose like a flame to his eyes, and for a single instant it seemed to him that he had never looked upon a woman until to-day.
“So you would sit with him in the dust of the roadside?” he asked, smiling.
“But the dust is beautiful when the sun shines on it,” answered the girl; “and on wet days we should go into the pine woods, and on fair ones rest in the open meadows; and we should sing with the robins, and make friends with the little foxes.”
He laughed softly. “Ah, Betty, Betty, I know you now for a dreamer of dreams. With all your pudding-mixing and your potato-planting you are moon-mad like the rest of us.”
She made a disdainful little gesture. “Why, I never planted a potato in my life.”
“Don't scoff, dear lady,” he returned warningly; “too great literalness is the sin of womankind, you know.”
“But I don't care in the least for vegetable-growing,” she persisted seriously.
The humour twinkled in his eyes. “Thriftless woman, would you prefer to beg?”