CHAPTER VI
LIFE THROUGH OTHER EYES
Phyllis Raysun was quite a remarkable girl when her parentage and simple, yet strenuous, upbringing were considered. Her beauty was quite decided, and was admitted even by those female souls who were really fond of her. She was dark, with large, dark eyes, deeply fringed with black lashes, almost Celtic in their depth and sleepy fire. And with it all she wore an expression of keenness and decision at all times. She was tall, of a height which always goes so well with a purposeful face such as hers; and the delightful contours of her figure were all the more gracefully natural for the absence of corsets. But wherein lay the unusual side of her personality was the unconventional views of life she already possessed at the age of eighteen years. The breadth of them was often quite disconcerting in one so young, and frequently it made her the despair of her plump and doting, and very ordinarily helpless mother.
Perhaps her mother's helplessness may have accounted in some measure for Phyllis's unusual mental development. It may have had a pronounced influence upon her, for they two were quite alone. Years ago, when she was an infant, her father had died, leaving her mother in sorely straitened circumstances.
From her earliest years Phyllis had had to think for herself, and help in the struggle against poverty. Then, as she grew older, she realized that they possessed a wholly neglected property which should yield them a living. So she set to work on the farm, and, little by little, she wrested from the soil that profit, which, as the years went on, gradually lifted them both from the depths of penury to a frugal comfort. Now the farm was nearing prosperity, and, with the aid of a hired man, Phyllis worked it with all the skill of an expert and widely experienced farmer.
Her mother was simply a chorewoman; a capable enough woman in this lowly capacity. She could never hope to rise above it. Nor was Phyllis ever disturbed by the knowledge. She valued the usefulness of her mother's work too well, and, besides, she loved the helpless old body, and delighted in the care of her as though she were some small child of her own.
Phyllis had spent her morning out seeding, as every other farmer in the district was doing, while her hired man was busy with plough and team breaking the last year's fallows. The work was arduous and monotonous, but the girl felt neither of these things. She loved her little homestead with its hundred and sixty acres, and she asked nothing better than to tend it, and watch, and reap the results. She was robust in mind and body, and none of the claims of this agricultural life came amiss to her.
But during the past six months a new interest had come into her life in the shape of a blue-eyed male giant of her own age; and from the moment she first set eyes upon him an added glow lit the heavens of her consciousness. She did not recognize its meaning at first. Only she realized that somehow the winter days were less dark and irksome, and an added zest became apparent in the everlasting looking forward.
But by degrees he became an intimate in her life, and, finally, almost part of it. It was a wonderful time for Phyllis. Through it all he was always associated with the first apparition she had had of him. In her dreaming mind, as she went about her work, she always saw him as she had seen him then, sitting on the back of a beautiful East-bred, golden chestnut horse, disconsolately viewing the distance with questioning blue eyes, seeking a direction he had absolutely lost.
That was her first meeting with Frank Burton, and somehow she had been glad, from the first moment she set eyes on him, that hers had been the opportunity of relieving him from the dilemma in which he had found himself.