“Come,� she said sweetly, and to Mrs. Wylie’s surprise the boy put his hand into the inviting one of the nurse and suffered himself to be led from the room.
“What remarkable eyes that girl has,� soliloquized Mrs. Wylie as the door closed behind them. “I have been more fortunate than I dared hope in securing her services.�
CHAPTER II
TIBBY’S EYES
As for Tibby’s eyes, no one had been able to decide upon the exact color of them. On warm, sunshiny afternoons, when Tibby yawned in a swinging hammock on the back veranda and the pupils were small and contracted, they appeared of a cerulean hue, warm and languorous. On cloudy days, when the sky was dark and lowering, Tibby’s eyes were gray and forbidding. But when a tempest of rage shook her pliant figure her eyes sparkled black as coal from the mines. Her brothers called them cat’s eyes, not only because the name Tibby was a contraction of the more severe Tabitha of her christening, but from the ever-varying, changing light which shone in their restless depths, which now dilated until the least rim of color was visible, now contracted like those of a purring kitten.
Tibby had not to depend upon the beauty of her opalescent eyes for recognition, for nature had dealt most generously with her, giving her regular features, and so mixing and intermingling the types of brunette and blonde in her physique that no one could determine in which class to catalogue her. The delicious glint of the sun in her brown hair, the rich waves of carmine that tinged and receded from her cheeks, the arched black brows which defined themselves so conspicuously against the shining whiteness of her forehead were contradictions when compared, but formed a tout ensemble most charming.
It appeared, too, that Tibby’s nature was as contradictory. Wayward and wilful as she was at times, at others she appeared of angelic sweetness, and the soft, innocent depths of those slumberous blue eyes captivated the hearts of all who met her, and made them swear no evil could exist in her.
And now while Tibby, like her feline namesake, purrs most delusively in the midst of her aesthetic surroundings, and her pink-tinted fingers effectually conceal any hidden claws, her mind reviews a scene but three weeks behind the present.
She sees an old-fashioned, wood-colored farm-house with broad lawn, in which are bright beds of dear old-fashioned flowers, marigolds and petunias, bachelor buttons and scarlet poppies; and she sees herself in calico gown and big sunbonnet standing under the old elm, in listening attitude, while a shrill, chirruping note sounds in her ear.
“Hello, Tib, what’s up?� shouts a boyish voice, and a stout-limbed, bare-footed lad bounds down the path toward her.
“Hush!� she says. “Ah, you have frightened it away! It was singing in the old elm and I hoped to find it. It’s a tree-toad, isn’t it? Did you ever see one, Tom?�