The bluff was less surly than it appeared to be down in the Corral, and the benediction of autumn was in the view from its crest. They sat down on the stone ledge crowning it, and Elinor threw aside her jaunty scarlet outing cap. The breezes played in her dark hair, and her cheeks were pink from the exercise. Victor Burleigh looked at her with frank, wide-open eyes.
“What's the matter? Is my hair a fright?” she murmured.
“A fright!” Burleigh flung off his cap and ran his fingers through his own hair. “Not what I call a fright,” he asserted in an even tone.
“What's that scar on your left arm? It looks like a little hole dug out,” Elinor declared.
Vic's brown sweater sleeve was pushed up to the elbow.
“It is a little hole I put in where I dug out the flesh with a pocket knife,” he replied, carelessly.
“Did you do that yourself?” Elinor cried. “What made you be so cruel?”
“I wasn't so cruel. 'I seen my duty and I done it noble,' as the essay runs. I made that vacancy to get ahead of a rattlesnake that got me there, a venomous big one with nine police calls on its tail, and that's no snake story, either. I cut the flesh out to get rid of the poison. I was n't in a college laboratory and I had to work fast and use what tools I had with me. I killed the gentleman that did the mischief, though,” Vic added carelessly, deftly slipping down his sleeve as if to change the subject.
“Oh, tell me about it, do,” Elinor urged. “You were killing a snake the first time I saw you.”
How dainty and sweet she was sitting there in her neat-fitting outing suit of dark gray with scarlet pipings and buttons and pocket flaps, and the scarlet of her full lips, and the coral tint of her cheeks, the white hands and white throat and brow, the dark eyes and finely shaped head with abundant beautiful hair.