As she lay at more than usual ease, dreamily happy as she noticed the sun, the shadows, and the far-stretching curves of the river, she saw a dugout, what in the North is called a pirogue,[[4]] put out from the farther bank. A woman stood in the stern and urged it across the swift current with notable strength and dexterity. Presently it ran onto the beach, and Dorothy Maybrook came up the steps, a basket in her hand.
[4]. Spanish, piriagua.
As to most things, all books, and people in general, Anne Lyndsay had a highly vitalized curiosity; but, as to this woman, it was more eager than usual. She was mildly skeptical as to the fact that the wife of a small Quaker farmer, illy educated, and, of course, without the tact which makes sympathy acceptable, could have been what Margaret Lyndsay said this woman had been to her in the last summer’s trial. Anne was apt to distrust Mrs. Lyndsay’s unwonted enthusiasms. Also, this invalid lady was very democratic in theory, but by nature’s decree an aristocrat, whether she would or not. Thus, Anne Lyndsay was now a little on her guard, and more curious than she would have liked to have been thought.
But when, as Dorothy Maybrook advanced, a pair of large gray eyes came into the horizon of another pair almost as luminous, Anne, as she afterward explained, felt something akin to fascination. She made up her mind as Mrs. Maybrook approached that her facial expression was one of strange purity of repose. The next moment Miss Anne cast a foot over the hammock’s edge, and made an effort to rise, in order to greet the new-comer. But to get out of a hammock with ease is not given to mortals to achieve without much practice, and as all rapid movements were sure to summon at once her unrelenting enemy, pain, she fell back with a low exclamation, wrung from her by pain so extreme that she was quite unprepared. Sudden anger stirred within her, because she had so plainly betrayed her feelings to one who had been described to her as full of sympathy and almost incredibly competent to notice the peculiarities of men and things. If this woman should dare to pity her, in words or with looks!
“Good morning. Mrs. Maybrook, I am sure. I am Miss Lyndsay,” said Miss Anne, in her most tranquil voice, and it was capable of many tones.
Said Dorothy to herself, “That woman isn’t long for this world.” What she said aloud was:
“Yes, I’m Dorothy Maybrook. I brought over some wild strawberries for Mrs. Lyndsay. They’re very early, but there’s a sort of little nest right back of our clearing, and the sun gets in there constant,—seems as if it couldn’t ever get out,—and it hatches the berries two weeks before they’re done blooming anywhere else.”
“Thank you,” said Anne, who was making a difficult effort to catch with the foot outside of the hammock a slipper lost in the foiled attempt to rise.