“I reckon your folk are all Yankee,” he ventured softly.
She nodded.
“Are you afraid of us? Do you hate us, ma’am?”
She shook her head, stealing a glance at him from her lovely eyes. If that was part of her profession, she had learned it well; for he laughed and stretched out, resting easily on one elbow, looking up at her admiringly under her faded sunbonnet.
“Are you ever lonely here?” he inquired gravely.
Again her dark eyes rested on him shyly, but she shook her head in silence.
“Never lonely without anybody to talk to?” he persisted, removing his slouched army hat and passing his hands over his forehead.
“What have I to say to anybody?” she asked coquettishly.
A little breeze sprang up, stirring his curly hair and fluttering the dangling strings of her sunbonnet. He lay at full length there, a slender, athletic figure in his faded gray uniform, idly pulling the grass up to twist and braid into a thin green rope.
The strange exhilaration that danger had brought had now subsided; she glanced at him indifferently, noting the well-shaped head, the boyish outlines of face and figure. He was no older than she—and not very wise for his years.