"I am so glad you like our mountains, Mr. Horn," she continued. "Mr. Lowell wrote his beautiful lines, 'What is so Rare as a Day in June,' in our village, and Mr. Longfellow never lets a summer pass without spending a week with us. And you had a comfortable ride down the mountains, and were the views enjoyable?"
"Oh, too beautiful for words!" It was Margaret this time, not the scenery; he could not take his eyes from her, as he caught the beauty of her throat against the soft white of her dress, and the exquisite tint of the October rose in contrast with the autumnal browns of her hair. Never had he dreamed she could be so lovely. He could not believe for one moment that she was the Margaret he had known; any one of the Margarets, in fact. Certainly not that one of the Academy school in blue gingham with her drawing-board in her lap, alone, self-poised, and unapproachable, among a group of art-students; or that other one in a rough mountain-skirt, stout-shoes, and a tam-o'-shanter, the gay and fearless companion, the comrade, the co-worker. This Margaret was a vision in white, with arms bare to the elbow—oh, such beautiful arms! and the grace and poise of a duchess—a Margaret to be reverenced as well as loved—a woman to bend low to.
During this episode, in which Silas sat studying the various expressions that flitted across Oliver's face, Mr. Grant shifted uneasily in his chair. At last his jaws closed with a snap, while the two tufts of cotton-wool, drawn together by a frown, deeper than any which had yet crossed his face, made a straight line of white. Oliver's enthusiastic outburst and the gesture which accompanied it had removed Silas Grant's last doubt. His mind was now made up.
The young fellow, however, rattled on, oblivious now of everything about him but the joy of Margaret's presence.
"The view from the bend of the road was especially fine—" he burst forth again, his eyes still on hers. "You remember, Miss Margaret, your telling me to look out for it?" (he couldn't stand another minute of this unless she joined in the talk). "In my own part of the State we have no great mountains nor any lovely brooks full of trout. And the quantity of deer that are killed every winter about here quite astonishes me. Why, Mr. Pollard's son Hank, so he told me, shot fourteen last winter, and there were over one hundred killed around Moose Hillock. You see, our coast is flat, and many of the farms in my section run down to the water. We have, it is true, a good deal of game, but nothing like what you have here," and he shrugged his shoulders, and laughed lightly as if in apology for referring to such things in view of all the wealth of the mountains about him.
"What kind of game have you got?" asked Mr. Grant, twisting his head and looking at Oliver from under the straight line of cotton-wool.
Oliver turned his head toward the speaker. "Oh, wild geese, and canvas-back ducks and—"
"And negroes?" There was a harsh note in Silas's voice which sounded like a saw when it clogs in a knot, but Oliver did not notice it. He was too happy to notice anything but the girl beside him.
"Oh, yes, plenty of them," and he threw back his head, laughing this time until every tooth flashed white.
"You hunt them, too, don't you? With dogs, most of the time, I hear."
There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice now.