For several succeeding weeks there was seldom a day when the fiery black horse and comfortable old carriage did not appear before the farm-house door, and but few of those days when Mrs. Jerome did not avail herself of the opportunity, sometimes accompanied by the child and Nettie, oftener by the child alone.
The interest and curiosity with which young Granger had inspired Mrs. Jerome in the beginning, deepened continually. A true son of the soil, descendant of a long line of farmers, whence came this remarkable physical beauty, this refined, almost poetic, temperament, making it impossible for him, in spite of the unconventionally of his manner, to do a rude or ungraceful act? It was against tradition, she thought,—against precedent. It puzzled and fascinated her. She found it impossible to treat him as an inferior, notwithstanding the relation in which he stood to her. Indeed, she soon ceased to think of that at all. The books which she took with her upon their protracted drives were seldom opened. She found it pleasanter to lie back in the corner of the carriage, and watch the shifting panorama of hill and forest and lake through which they were driving. That the handsome head with its clustering locks and clear-cut profile, which was always between her and the landscape, proved a serious obstruction to the view, and that her eyes quite as often occupied themselves with studying the play of those mobile lips, and the nervous tension of those sun-browned hands upon the reins, was, perhaps, natural and unavoidable.
She talked with him a great deal, too, in her careless, fluent way, or rather to him, for the conversation on Granger's part was limited to an occasional eager question, a flash of his fine eyes, or an appreciative smile at some witty turn. She talked of many things, but with delicate tact avoided such themes as might prove embarrassing to an unsophisticated mind—including books.
It was, therefore, with a little shock of surprise that she one day found him buried in the pages of Tennyson, a volume of whose poems she had left upon the carriage seat while she and Lill explored a neighboring pasture for raspberries.
He was lying at full length in the sweet-fern, one arm beneath his head, his face eager and absorbed. He did not notice her approach, and she had been standing near him for some moments before he became aware of her presence. Then, closing the book, he sprang to his feet.
"So you read poetry, Mr. Granger?" she said, arching her straight brows slightly.
"Sometimes," he answered. "I have read a good many of the old poets. My grandfather left a small library, which came into my possession."
"Then you have read Shakspere——" began the lady.
"Yes," interrupted Granger, "Shakspere, and Milton, and Pope, and Burns. Is it so strange?" he asked, turning upon her one of his swift glances. "If one plowman may write poetry another plowman may read it, I suppose."