"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet to-night."
"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing moon. "I won't be afraid."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.
"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the look of you."
The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away—the big day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.
The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh, and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.
Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.
"You don't sleep," she began.