“Ill! Not he. It was that fool Silas sent the telegram. Just an attack of rheumatism.”
She went upstairs to change and the two young people went into the garden, where Richard Pinckney was having some alterations done.
On the day Phyl’s hair went up it seemed to Richard that a new person had come to live with them. Phyl had suddenly turned into a young woman—and such a young woman! He had never considered her looks before, to young men of his age and temperament girls in pigtails are, as far as the manhood in them is concerned, little more and sometimes less than things. But Phyl with her hair up was not to be denied, and had he not been philandering after Frances Rhett, and had Phyl been a total stranger suddenly seen, it is quite possible that a far warmer feeling than admiration might have been the result. As it was she formed a new interest in life.
He showed her the alterations he was making, slight enough and causing little change in the general plan of the garden.
“I scarcely like doing anything,” said he, “but that new walk will be no end of an improvement, and it will save that bit of grass which is being trodden to death by people crossing it, then there’s all those bushes by the gate, they’re going, those behind the tree,—a little space there will make all the difference in the world.”
“Behind the magnolia?”
“Yes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Phyl.
“Why?”
“Because they have been there always and—well, look!”