“Yes,” replied David. “How’s your tobacco? Mine’s about gone.”
“Lots of it,” answered Bascomb gayly. “Come, let’s go a-Juneing, you old slow-poke. Amaryllis waits without—let’s see,” he said, looking at Swickey, “without what?”
“Without a hat—if I’m Amaryllis.”
“Well, Ammy’ll get her pretty nose sun-burned, sure.”
“Don’t care,” replied Swickey, laughing.
“But I do,” said Bascomb. “I like that nose just as it is.”
They sauntered along in the June sun, Swickey walking ahead. She seemed particularly alluring that morning, in the neat flannel waist and trim skirt reaching to her moccasin-tops. The soft gray of her collar, rolled back from her full, round throat, enhanced her rich coloring unobtrusively. As she turned to speak to Bascomb, the naturalness of the motion, the unstudied grace and poise accompanying it, appealed directly to his sense of physical beauty.
“By Jove!” he muttered, “it isn’t every girl could wear those clothes and make them becoming. Most girls need the clothes to help, but she makes ’em what they are—Diana’s vestments—”
“Whose vest?” said Swickey, catching part of his soliloquy; “you’re frowning fearfully, and you don’t usually.”
“Just dreaming, Miss Avery.”