While she had been singing the man had come down the dusty road to the old-fashioned house on the meadows,—a man of medium size, possessing a strongly built, powerful frame, a dark face burnt almost black from the sun, and a peculiar gravity of manner that proclaimed even more loudly than his swarthy complexion some foreign admixture of blood.
The girl in the tree knew who he was. This was the lover of whom she had been singing. He was the offspring of an adventurous Spanish maiden, of Valencia, who had run away from home to marry a love-stricken British sailor; and the girl was American, or considered herself so, and her lover was considerably older than herself. When he removed his hat her eyes went unerringly to his one defect, the unmistakable bald spot in the centre of his thick crop of black hair.
He delighted in startling her. He had crept softly through the gate and under the tree where she was singing; and gazing demurely down at him as he stood with his head a few inches from her face, she remarked, mischievously, “Mr. Owl, do you see the sun? Why did you not wait for the moon?”
He reached up one hand and seized the trembling branch, then with the other gently attempted to draw the light head from its nest of green leaves. It would not come. What an exquisite, waggish, obstinate and altogether adorable little head it was. Yet it would not lie on his shoulder.
“Come down, chickadee,” he said, longingly.
“Come up, Mr. Owl,” she replied, teasingly.
She was daring him. Both his powerful arms went up to her perch; and, lifting her down, he seated himself on the rustic bench underneath, and smoothed back the fluffy auburn hair from her white forehead.
She sat on his knee with her red lips firmly pressed together. She would not open them. She was obdurate to his appeals for a word, a smile, a caress.
“Go back, then, you obstinate parrot,” he said; and, irritably restoring her to her former position, he stretched himself against the back of the seat, and propped his head on his hand.
She drew aside one of the willow’s pendant arms. “This—at seven o’clock in the morning! I am shocked.”