Mabella’s laugh rang out like the call of a bird.
“Go and get ready, girls,” said Mr. Lansing, “and I’ll fetch the horses around.”
The girls went indoors, first telling Sidney they would not be long. He went to the side of an old well and sat down upon the edge, looking into its cool depths; far, far down, he could see the distorted vision of his own face. A fat toad hopped lazily about the stones in the moist coolness of the well mouth. The wooden handle of the windlass was worn by many palms—as the creeds of the world are fretted and attenuated by the very eagerness of those who seek the Living Waters by their aid. Hop-vines grew over the house and Phœbe birds fluttered through their rustling leaves. The men stared curiously at the stranger by the well, to whom presently came the two girls again, in flat, wide hats.
“How brave you are!” he said to Vashti, rising at their approach. He was more than ordinarily tall, but Vashti’s stately head was well above his shoulder.
“How brave you are! That beast of a horse looked frightful as it stood rearing above you! I thought you would be killed.”
“I am not afraid of many things,” said Vashti, soberly. Yet there was that leaping within her breast which sometimes frightened her sorely.
Sidney’s eyes dilated with eagerness as he drank in the suave beauty of her statuesque shape. It was a beauty which appealed to him keenly. Divorced from all minor attributes, it depended securely upon form and line alone; colour, environment, counted as nothing in its harmonious whole. But one of the flexile wrists was swollen and stiff.
“You are hurt,” he cried, forgetting that to keen eyes his anxiety might seem absurd. “You are hurt! That horse!”
She coloured a little—slowly—it was like the reflection of a rosy cloud on marble.
“Yes, it is twisted, I think.”