“I’ll find you out, too, if I kin,” he threw back.
She walked two or three swift steps down the path before she retorted, without looking around:
“No, you won’t. You’ll simply ‘chin.’”
This was a pleasant blow at his profession. He was a talker. Only that very morning he had written in an “album”—it was a day of albums—answers to questions that bared him to the core.
What is your occupation? Deliverer of addresses.
What would you rather be? Maker of speeches.
What is your favorite game? Conversation.
What game do you most dislike? Conversation of others.
He watched her as she walked swiftly down the path. Good-looking youngsters do hold the eye! The suggestion of young Indian persisted, the ideal Indian maiden of Hiawatha: she was so brown; the hair fell in an enormous black braid; her form was almost curveless; and she strode along with all the motion in her gliding feet, her lithe body as steady and as straight as a young poplar.
She disappeared for a moment in the dip of a gully, then rose again and dwindled slowly down the long path across a field. With folded arms he stared after her, thinking of many things: of the beauty of young childhood, a wondrous, vanishing thing; of her active, mature mind, caged up in that child’s frame; of—at the end of the path she turned swiftly, as if she knew he was there, and shot a hand high in the air as a parting salute. He waved back instantaneously. He could watch her for two minutes longer, until she crossed the railroad. But she trudged sturdily on and did not look back again.