“Now I call this decidedly gay,” he remarked, stretching out his long legs slowly, and leaning against a slanting rock, with one arm behind his head. “Miss Frances, will you be good enough to tell me that my face isn't dirty?”
“Truth compels me to admit that you have one little daub over your left eyebrow.”
“Thank you,” said Arnold, rubbing it languidly with his handkerchief. His hat had dropped off, and he did not replace it; he did not look at the girl, but let his eyes rest on the thread of falling water that gleamed from the spring. Miss Frances, regarding him with some timidity, thought: How much younger he looks without his hat! He had that sensitive fairness which in itself gives a look of youth and purity; the sternness of his face lay in the curves which showed under his mustache, and in the silent, dominant eye.
“You've no idea how good it sounds to a lonely fellow like me,” he said, “to hear a girl's laugh.”
“But there are a great many women here,” Miss Frances observed.
“Oh yes, there are women everywhere, such as they are; but it takes a nice girl, a lady, to laugh!”
“I don't agree with you at all,” replied Miss Frances coldly. “Some of those Mexican women have the sweetest voices, speaking or laughing, that I have ever heard; and the Cornish women, too, have very fresh, pure voices. I often listen to them in the evening when I sit alone in my room. Their voices sound so happy”—
“Well, then it is the home accent,—or I'm prejudiced. Don't laugh again, please, Miss Frances; it breaks me all up.” He moved his head a little, and looked across at the girl to assure himself that her silence did not mean disapproval. “I admit,” he went on, “that I like our Eastern girls. I know you are from the East, Miss Newell.”
“I am from what I used to think was East,” she said, smiling. “But everything is East here; people from Indiana and Wisconsin say they are from the East.”
“Ah, but you are from our old Atlantic coast. I was sure of it when I first saw you. If you will pardon me, I knew it by your way of dressing.”