We have obeyed her faithfully, Nelly and I. Through the long years since, no coldness or estrangement has ever come between us. My first and last jealousy was buried in Lill's grave; and Nelly and I have proved, to our own satisfaction at least, that a friendship between two girls may be strong as it is sweet, faithful as it is fond,—the inalienable riches of a whole life.
MISSY.
Miss Hurlburt had wandered farther into the woods than was her habit, beguiled by the wonderful loveliness overhead, underfoot, all about her. It was an afternoon in early October, but warm as June. The leaves were of a thousand brilliant hues; for one or two nights of keen frost, a week before, had seemed to set them on fire. There were boughs as scarlet as the burning bush before which Moses wondered and worshipped. There were others of deep orange; and others, still, of variegated leaves, where the green lingered and was mixed with scarlet and brown and yellow, till some of them looked like patterns in a kaleidoscope.
Underfoot was the delicate, fresh woodland moss. Sometimes pine needles made the path soft; and sometimes, leaves, which had died earlier than their mates, rustled under Miss Hurlburt's tread. Above, high over the flaming tree boughs, was the deep, lustrous, blue sky, with all its heavenly secrets. The air was full of that wonderful, radiant haze of autumn which makes the distance vague with beauty. And the temperature, as I said, was of June; so warm that Miss Hurlburt had taken off her hat, and let the scarlet mantle fall from her shoulders.
She herself, had a painter been there to study the scene, would have been no unworthy wood nymph. Her figure was full, but not too full for grace. Health and strength were in every line of it. Her fine, abundant hair, like that of which Lowell wrote, "outwardly brown, but inwardly golden," was brushed back from her low, broad forehead, and coiled in a great heavy knot, from which a stray curl or two had escaped, at the back of her proud little head.
She had great brown eyes, full of thought and feeling; cheeks, in which the rich, warm color glowed; bright, full, half-parted lips. She carried herself with grace, regal though unstudied. She never consciously remembered that she was Eleanor Hurlburt,—whose father owned the two great factories in the valley, and all the lands far and near, even these royal woods through which she walked,—but, unconsciously to herself, the fact gave firmness and elasticity to her step, and self-possession to her air.
She very seldom wandered alone so far away from home. The factory hands were a necessary part of the great wealth which surrounded Miss Hurlburt's life with ease and luxury; but some of them might not be altogether pleasant to meet in lonely places,—so she usually was driven out in the elegant Victoria, with the spanking bays which were her father's pride, by the decorous family coachman; or drove herself in her jaunty little pony phaeton, with her own man, all bands and buttons, seated in the rumble behind.