“Isn’t this a dandy adventure, Ruth? How funny you look! But these are pretty dresses, just the same, aren’t they? How light and cool they are!” And tossing her arms into the air, Rose danced upon the grass.
“O—Eh!” called a laughing voice.
Rose and Ruth whirled round, and there, a little above them on the slope, stood a slender, long-legged girl of their own age, dressed as they were, though her gown was striped faint rose and blue, like the sky at sunrise.
In her hands she held a pair of long pipes that joined at the mouth-piece, and she stood, poised and erect, laughing, her eyes shining dark and vivid under the rippling waves of her golden hair, bound with silver bands.
Smiling back at her, the sisters stood close together, feeling a little shy but full of admiration.
“I was afraid you were going to be late,” said the stranger girl, coming swiftly toward them. “I’ve been waiting here a long while, blowing on my pipes, hoping that perhaps I could win some dryad out to play with me. But now you are here it doesn’t matter. Did you come very far?”
“We came so fast I don’t know ... is this place near Wyoming?” answered Rose, doubtfully.
“Wyoming? You must be barbarians! I never heard any one speak of that country, not even the sailors who have been to the end of the earth.”
“Who are you?” asked Ruth, who wasn’t quite sure just what a barbarian was, and so didn’t care to commit herself by either admitting or denying that she or her sister might be such a creature.
“I am Sappho.”