He brought her a chair, but took the precaution to put it at a safe distance from his own and where he could see her squarely. He had been thinking only of Helen, expecting her and waiting for her. This was she, of course, and her simple, unaffected manner was her premonitory artillery against which she would find him proof. She was very pretty, but he was not sure that he hadn’t seen faces prettier than hers, and on the whole he was a little disappointed to find her less formidable than he had expected. All this passed through his mind while Alice was thanking him for the chair in which she seated herself, with half of her new boots showing under the hem of her dress. Craig saw them and thought them very small and well fitting and that she was displaying them on purpose.
“Do you think you will like it here?” he asked, feeling he must say something.
“Oh, yes,” she answered enthusiastically. “I like the country, and it is so delightfully cool after the heat of yesterday. Do you know I have a great desire to roll in that new mown hay which smells so sweet. I believe I am something of a romp.”
Craig did not know what to say to this, so he spoke of the lilies which Alice was wearing.
“I see you like them, too; they are my favorites,” he said, “and I always buy one of Jeff. He hasn’t been round yet. I wonder what keeps him.”
“Pray take this. I have more,” Alice said, offering him the lily which was in her belt, without a thought that she might seem too familiar, until she saw something like surprise on Craig’s face which brought a blush to her own.
She certainly was a little forward, Craig thought, but he took the lily, thinking it quite in keeping with her character to give it to him. He didn’t know that in her forgetfulness of self Alice would give away anything another wanted and that she would as soon have given the lily to Uncle Zacheus as to him. He was a bit of a prig she was thinking, and wondering what she should say to him, when Jeff appeared with his basket.
“You are too late. I have one; the young lady gave it to me,” Craig said.
“All right. She helped me pull ’em,” Jeff answered, as he darted away, while a suspicion of his mistake began to dawn upon Craig.
“You helped him gather them! Aren’t you Miss Tracy?” he asked in some confusion.