“And now”––Peter put his plate down for the faithful Ginger to lap clean, and prepared to rise––“and now, you’ve come, stranger. When you hesitated a time back as to whether you was pausing or staying on, I just held my breath, and when you slapped out, ‘staying on,’ I thought to myself, ‘Now, which is he, a dispensation of Providence or just a plain passer-by?’”
Northrup smiled grimly. This all fitted into his own vague mood of unreality.
“You mustn’t take me seriously,” he said, going around the table to help his host. “I’m as ordinary as the majority. I like the looks of things here. I stop and enjoy myself, and pass on! That’s the usual way, isn’t it?”
“Yes”––Polly began gathering the dishes––“it’s what happens while one stops, that counts. That, and what one 15 leaves behind, when he passes on. It’s real queer, though, to have any one staying on this season of the year.”
During the afternoon Northrup wandered in the woods which rose abruptly from behind the house. So still was the brilliant forest that a falling leaf startled him and a scurrying creature among the bushes set his nerves tingling. Then it was that the haunting face and voice of the girl in the little yellow house rose again with an insistence that could not be disregarded. It dominated his thought; it was part of this strange sense of shadowy and coming events; it refused to be set aside.
It did not mock him––he could have dealt with that phase––it pleaded. It seemed to implore him to accept it along with his quickened pulses; the colour of the autumn day; the sweetness of the smell of crushed leaves; the sound of lapping water; the song of birds.
“I wonder who she is, and why she looks as she does?”
Northrup ceased to scoff at his fancy; he wooed it. He pictured the girl’s hair loose from the rough cap––curly, rather wild hair with an uplift in every tendril. What colour was it? Gold-brown probably, like the eyes. For five minutes he tried to decide this but knew that he would have to see it again to make sure.
The face was a small face, but it was strong and unutterably appealing. A hungry little face; a face whose soul was ill-nourished, a contradictory face.
Northrup called himself to order just here. He wasn’t going to be an ass, not if he could help it!