It was Nature’s “grueling” pack, a lamb on the back, as mountaineers pityingly call a lump between the shoulders, not obtrusive—but obvious in the tight riding coat.
But what did obtrude itself, what plowed deep into their young breasts, was the flash of the eyes, very dark, very keen, against the green radiance of the wood.
It just crashed across Pemrose’s gaze, as it were, because for a moment, the tiniest moment, she seemed to see something known, the ghost of something familiar, in it, which, yet, was so wild, so adrift, so unknown, as to seem a misfit for the morning—a misfit for the woods, with their happy-hearted girlhood.
It was almost as if the horsewoman felt that, herself, for she vanished immediately, to reappear, a minute later, leading a bay horse forth from a bridle path.
With the bright, obtrusive flash of a heel now, a steel-shod heel, she was in the saddle—which had a camper’s pack slung across it—and riding off, with just one backward glance which lit like a brilliant moth on Una.
“Well—for goodness sake!” Pemrose stared vacantly—hands clasped. “Did you see the shining creeper on her heel, the bulky umbrella in her stirrup strap? So—so she’s the radio ‘bug’—amateur!” as if she could hardly find breath for the discovery. “I’ll engage she has a nice little receiving set tucked away in that umbrella, the antennæ running round the steel ribs. Oh! it’s true—no longer am I the only lion,” with a tragic chuckle.
“Only witch—rather,” corrected Lura. “She! She just came and went, like an apparition.”
“Don’t talk of apparitions:
caroled Pemrose, laughing all over, in quivering excitement, at the memory of how illusory moonlight, long-haired goats, half-bred Angora, with the novelty of the wee ’oor had—a few hours before—put phantoms over upon the imagination.
“Well—well! do you know that it isn’t goats we ought to think of now, but cows, if we re going after milk for breakfast.” Naomi waved her sketchbook—a rallying pennon. “They’ll say, the other girls, hungry girls, that we—we’d be good ones to send out after trouble, because we’re so slow in getting back,” with a fluttering dimple.