How beautiful and fresh she looked to him even in a dusty travelling dress! He was drinking the nectar from the depths of her eyes.
“Now don’t you think Helen the prettiest girl you ever saw, Mr. Gaston?” she asked.
“I hadn’t noticed it.”
“Where were your eyes?”
“Elsewhere. I’m so glad you are going to spend a month at the Springs, Miss Sallie. I used to go to school there when a little boy. They had a girl’s school there in the winter and boys under twelve were admitted. I know every nook and corner of the big forest back of the hotel. I ’ll see that you don’t get lost.”
“That will be fine. But you must bring every goodlooking boy in the county and make him bow down and worship Helen. She is not used to it, but she is tickled to death over these Southern boys, and I’m going to give her the best time she ever had in her life.”
“I ’ll do everything you command—except bow down myself. Bob’s agreed to do that.”
She smiled in spite of her effort to look serious, and her mother pinched her arm. She laughed.
“So you and Bob St. Clare were out there plotting before we could get out of the train?”
“Nothing unlawful, I assure you.”