“There you are!” cried his sister. “Fancy living beside people in this country and not knowing them. Can't you see that we must not let things get awry that way? We must all pull together. Tom is fearfully strong on that, and he is right, too, I suppose, although it is trying at times. Now we begin to climb a bit here. Then there are good stretches further along where we can hurry.”
But it seemed to her brother that the good stretches were rather fewer and shorter than the others, for the sun was overhead when they pulled up their horses, steaming and ready enough to halt, in a small clearing in the midst of a thick bit of forest. The timber was for the main part of soft woods, poplar, yellow and black, cottonwood, and further up among hills spruce and red pine. In the centre of the clearing stood a rough log cabin with a wide porch running around two sides. Upon this porch a young girl was to be seen busy over a cook stove. At the noise of the approaching horses the girl turned from her work and looked across the clearing at them.
“Heavens above! who is that, Sybil?” gasped her brother.
Mrs. Waring-Gaunt gave a delighted little cry. “Oh, my dear, you are really back.” In a moment she was off her horse and rushing toward the girl with her arms outstretched. “Kathleen, darling! Is it you? And you have really grown, I believe! Or is it your hair? Come let me introduce you to my brother.”
Jack Romayne was a young man with thirty years of experience of the normal life of the well-born Englishman, during which time he had often known what it was to have his senses stirred and his pulses quickened by the sight of one of England's fair women, than whom none of fresher and fairer beauty are to be found in all the world; yet never had he found himself anything but master of his speech and behaviour. But to-day, when, in obedience to his sister's call, he moved across the little clearing toward the girl standing at her side, he seemed to lose consciousness of himself and control of his powers of action. He was instead faintly conscious that a girl of tall and slender grace, with an aura of golden hair about a face lovelier than he had ever known, was looking at him out of eyes as blue as the prairie crocus and as shy and sweet, that she laid her hand in his as if giving him something of herself, that holding her hand how long he knew not, he found himself gazing through those eyes of translucent blue into a soul of unstained purity as one might gaze into a shrine, and that he continued gazing until the blue eyes clouded and the fair face flushed crimson, that then, without a word, he turned from her, thrilling with a new gladness which seemed to fill not only his soul but the whole world as well. When he came to himself he found his trembling fingers fumbling with the bridle of his horse. For a few moments he became aware of a blind rage possessing him and he cursed deeply his stupidity and the gaucherie of his manner. But soon he forgot his rage for thinking of her eyes and of what he had seen behind their translucent blue.
“My dear child,” again exclaimed Mrs. Waring-Gaunt, “I declare you have actually grown taller and grown—a great many other things that I may not tell you. What have they done to you at that wonderful school? Did you love it?”
The girl flushed with a quick emotion. “Oh, Mrs. Waring-Gaunt, it was really wonderful. I had such a good time and every one was lovely to me. I did not know people could be so kind. But it is good to get back home again to them all, and to you, and to all this.” She waved her hand to the forest about her.
“And who are up here to-day, and what are you doing?” inquired Mrs. Waring-Gaunt.
“In the meantime I am preparing dinner,” said the girl with a laugh.
“Dinner!” exclaimed Jack Romayne, who had meantime drawn near, determined to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of this girl as a man familiar with the decencies of polite society. “Dinner! It smells so good and we are desperately hungry.”