“It’s nice—now,” she answered, sweetly, and Will looked at her with sudden interest. He had never before noticed how bright and fair Annabel’s face was. The freckles didn’t seem to mar it a bit, and the nose turned up just enough to make her expression jolly and spirited. And as for the hair, the red was almost pretty where the firelight fell upon it.
Will had paid no attention until now to girls’ looks. A girl had seemed to be “just a girl” to him. And he, as well as her brothers and the other boys, had often teased Nan about her red hair and pug nose, without observing either of them very closely. But today he began to think all the fellows must have been blind, and that the girl’s claim to beauty was greater than any of them had ever suspected.
Somehow, too, Annabel’s accident and near approach to death seemed to have changed her. At any rate she was never the same to Will afterward. He couldn’t well have explained how she was different; but the large blue eyes had a new look in them, she was less romping and boisterous in her ways, and gentler in her speech.
She sat quietly in her corner of the sofa, a demure and almost bashful look upon her pleasant face. But in her natural and simple way she entertained her boy friend so cleverly that he never suspected he was being entertained at all.
“Papa says you’ve been to see him, and that you two have become great friends,” she remarked.
“Mr. Williams was surely very nice to me,” he answered, with enthusiasm. “I’m sure your father’s a good man, Annabel.”
“The best in the world, Will. We’re always happy when father’s home. But that isn’t very often, you know, he’s so busy.”
There was a pause, after that, which neither noticed.
“Nora says you grow those lovely mushrooms we’ve been having lately,” she said. “Do you, Will?”
“Yes; didn’t you know it? In the old barn. Doctor Meigs and I are partners. Do you like mushrooms, Nan?”