And then, just as she reached the pasture bars separating her father's farm from the red rock highway, Jerry-Jo McAlpin strode in sight from the wood path into which the highway ran. She waited for him and gave him a nervous smile as he came near. His first words startled her out of her dull mood.
"I've been up to the Hill Place. Him and her's there for a few days."
"Him and her!" Priscilla repeated, her face flushing. "Oh, him and her!"
"Sure!" McAlpin was holding her with a hard, fixed gaze.
In the mesh that was closing about Priscilla, strangely enough names were always largely eliminated. They might have altered her course later on, might have held her to the past, but Kenmore dealt briefly with personalities and visualized whatever it could. The name Travers had rarely, if ever, been spoken in Priscilla's presence. "The Hill Place folks" was the title found sufficient for general use.
"And I was remembering," Jerry-Jo went on, "how once you said you wanted to thank him for—for the books. We might take the canoe, come to-morrow, and the day is fine, and pay a visit."
Still Priscilla did not notice the gleam in McAlpin's keen eyes.
"Oh! if I only dared, Jerry-Jo! What an adventure it would be, to be sure. And how good of you to think of it."
"What hinders?"
"Father would never forgive me!"