Firefly was her very own, a spirited colt that gran’ther had raised and given her when she was fourteen, because Grandma Groves had said before she died she wanted Eva to have it. It was the only property she possessed in the world, and the twins grumbled because she had that, but held their peace from reproaching gran’ther with partiality, because Miss Tabitha assured them they needn’t envy the red-headed little spitfire the possession of that wild colt, that would certainly throw her some day and break her proud neck.
The spinster persisted in calling Eva’s golden locks red, through sheer spite and envy of the loveliness she would never acknowledge.
“Not half as pretty as the twins, with their black hair, black eyes an’ red cheeks! I never could abide red-headed gals with black eyes. They have the devil’s own temper!” she said.
But Eva had been riding Firefly several years, and was not killed yet, nor likely to be; for Firefly, though wild and spirited, knew and loved his mistress too well; and as she cantered up the long country road alone, with her golden, curly hair flying loose beneath her jaunty Tam o’ Shanter cap, the pair made a vision of strength and force and beauty to turn an old man young.
Over the distant mountaintops and the autumn-tinted woods the purple haze of twilight was lingering, and it was so still and peaceful, with only the woodland sights and sounds about that an unconscious calm breathed over her ruffled spirits from the tender benisons of nature.
After she had met and passed young Doctor Ludington within a mile of her home, she saw no one else until she drew rein at the farmhouse gate returning home.
As for the doctor, she had cantered past without salutation, her golden head crested scornfully, and a heightened color on her dimpled cheek. He was the handsomest young man in the neighborhood, but “they never spoke as they passed by.”
The cause of their aversion dated back more than thirty years ago, to the Civil War, since when there had existed a vendetta between the families of Groves and Ludington, handed down from the principals to their descendants.
Briefly stated, Gran’ther Groves had been a Union man, and carried a gun beneath the Stars and Stripes for his country. Old Doctor Ludington, a Confederate, had resented his neighbor’s political views, and denounced him as a traitor to the South. Wordy encounters at length resulted in blows, and an estrangement that only widened with the flight of years.
The Ludingtons had the best of it, too, for all the country round about were on their side and the Groves family were almost ostracized for their unpopular sentiments in favor of the Union.