The tree overhead was still wet with dew. Lilian had a scarlet shawl around her. She was a girl whose dark eyes and distinct eyebrows you noticed at once, adding afterwards to her personality hair inclined to cluster about the face, and a general elegance of figure which her camp dress suggested instead of outlined.
“As I was bringing my birds in,” said the civil engineer, “I saw Jerome and his gander sitting on the top rail of a fence, side by side. Jerome had his neck stretched up, whispering to the sky, and the gander had its neck stretched up, hissing its meditations. They were a divine pair!”
“As divine as Minerva and her owl, I should think,” said Miss Brooks. “He seems to me a tragic figure. How can you laugh at him?”
“How can you help laughing at him? But I do pity the old father.”
“And the blind aunt. Eric, I’m going across the river to see her. I told Mr. Marsh I would, the next time he came to camp.”
“He’s coming now. There’s his boat on the river.”
Lilian watched the boat and the Wabash. The expanse of limpid water was so shallow in places that its pebbles glittered in the sun, or a sand-bar showed under the surface, while the current in its channel ran deep and strong. Woods clothed its banks, and a gauze of blue hung over its southern bend. Northward a bridge stood on mighty legs of masonry, screening the work of the engineer among rapids beyond. A flat-boat ferry was being poled diagonally across from the east shore to the west, having for passengers a farmer and his horse.
The approaching skiff grounded also, and Jerome’s father stepped slowly out and came across a stretch of gravel and sward to the camp. Quantities of gray hair and beard, a stoop in his shoulders, and a staff in his hand made him venerable, yet his arms were strong and his eyes black and piercing. He was the richest man in his county, and the man most indifferent to externals. Over his jeans garments he wore a blue woolen cape edged with ancient gimp, evidently taken at random from women’s clothing.
He saw with approval the camp appointments: the civil engineer’s men breakfasting at their long table; the cook moving in and out of a canvas kitchen; and the young lady’s tent, revealing a pink net-screened bed, rugs, and stout book-shelves.
“You’re right well fixed over here,” he called out before the campers could wish him good-morning.