"Isn't the girl pretty," commented Cleo. The tourists were now gazing with fascinated interest at the old woman in her remarkable garb, and the brown-haired child, with the strange, glaring eyes, that seemed to affix themselves on the three scout girls. Altogether she seemed quite unlike other children. Her heavy brown braids hung over her shoulders like a picture of Marguerite in the opera, while her white gauzy dress was banded around with rows of black velvet, just like the artistic costumes worn in Greek plays. This style on so young a child gave a very stagy and quaint effect. She, like the woman, had a piece of lace on her head, but the one was white, the other black.
"See, they have been gathering flowers," decided Cleo, and at that moment the woman picked up the book, and attempted to drag the child away in spite of the latter's very evident desire to stare longer at the faces in the big touring car. "I should like to know where they live. We must find out if Aunt Audrey knows them."
"Can't get at my note book," remarked Grace, as Collins started in the drive, "but I am sure not to forget that girl."
"Nor the old woman," added Madaline. "I shouldn't want her for a nurse." And the last glimpse of the strangers showed the child still dragging behind the woman.
The excitement of arriving at Cragsnook, with its joys of new-found interest, however, soon erased the picture of the pathetic little child and her caretaker from the minds of the three scouts, and when next morning Mrs. Harris bade them good-by and started back to New York, she had no idea what part that first incident of their arrival would play in the children's vacation at Bellaire. In the care of Mrs. Guy Dunbar, otherwise Audrey Harris, sister to Cleo's father, the girls were indeed well placed and safely established, but Bellaire, being a mountain town near New York, possessed many possibilities for exploration, and at this delightful task the girls determined to set out promptly, for even vacation is not interminable.
"You may roam as far as you like," Aunt Audrey told them next morning, when the call of summer fairly shouted in each pair of expectant ears. "The girls next door, Lucille and Lalia, are coming over to meet you, and they will show you all the roads, and ways to get lost and found in."
"But, Aunt Audrey," began Cleo, "we saw the queerest woman yesterday just as we arrived. She was dressed like—well, like a circus person, and she had a little girl with her who just looked scared to death. Do you know who she could be?"
Aunt Audrey burst into a musical laugh. "Many Bellairites dress like circus folks," she answered. "In fact Uncle Guy often charges me with that sort of thing. But what was the special offense of your circus lady? What did she look like particularly?"
"Oh, she wore a black lace scarf on her head, and had some sort of big flowered skirt, and a waist with sleeves like airships. Then the little girl looked like a Greek dancer, and seemed scared to death," illustrated Cleo.
"I don't happen to place that piece of scenery," replied Mrs. Dunbar facetiously, "but if you see her again, and I'm within call, give me a whistle, and I'll report for inspection duty. You know I do quite a bit of painting, and I might like to have a model of that sort. I am sure old Sophia (or is she Azirah?) would fill in beautifully on an oil I am making of yon mountain," with a hand wave in the direction of the gray hills looming in hazy tints and shadowy glows against the early morning sky. Mrs. Dunbar was a beautiful woman, just young enough, rompish enough, and wise enough to get a very good time out of life, and pass some of the pleasure on. With her ashen blonde hair and very deep blue eyes, she looked like a "piece of scenery" herself, as she fluttered about the breakfast room—which was a porch opening from the dining-room, while she made her young visitors happy with her charming grace and genial hospitality.