Indeed, Cleena Keegan was a person of sufficient importance to warrant a paragraph quite to herself. She was a woman of middle age, with a wealth of curling, iron-gray hair, which she tucked away under a plain white cap. Her figure was large and grandly developed. She wore a blue print gown, carefully pinned back about her hips, thus disclosing her scarlet flannel petticoat; both garments faded by time and frequent washings to a most "artistic" hue. Upon her shoulders was folded a kerchief of coarse white muslin, spotlessly clean; and as she stood, poised among the glowing branches, with the dying sunset light touching her honest face to unusual brightness, she was well worth Amy's eager wish:—
"Oh, Cleena! That father were only here to see and paint you just as you are this minute!"
"Humph! It's meself's glad he isn't."
"Why! That's not nice of you, Goodsoul. Yet it's a great pity that a body who is such a 'study' in herself can't fix those branches a bit more gracefully. You're jamming the leaves all into a little mess and showing the stems! Oh, Cleena, I wonder if I can't reach them."
"Truth, it's meself's willin' you should try. Belike I'd be handier at the pullin' them down nor the puttin' them up."
With head erect she descended from the ladder, and stood, arms akimbo, regarding the results of her labor. Even to her it suggested something not "artistic," and at Fairacres anything inartistic was duly frowned upon.
"Faith, it's not the way the master would do it, I see that, but—"
Before either she could finish her sentence or Amy mount the ladder, Fayette had run to its top and stood there rapidly pulling from the wall the branches Cleena had arranged. Thrusting all but one between his knees, he fastened that over the window-frame so deftly and charmingly that Amy clapped her hands in delight.
"Oh, that's lovely! Try another—and another!"
He obeyed. His vacant face flushed with a glow of enthusiasm equalling, if not exceeding her own, and even Cleena spent some moments of her rarely wasted time in watching him.