Oh, heavens! why didn’t he go away!
To this she made no answer, hoping he would go. He caught hold of a bough, she thought, to pull some cherries; wrapped his reins around it, and the next moment stood up in his saddle, seized a limb above him and swung himself up. In her astonishment Ruth almost stopped breathing.
“I believe I’ll try a few—for old times’ sake,” he said to himself, or to her, she could not tell which, and swung himself higher. “I don’t suppose Colonel Welch would object.”
The next swing brought him up to the limb immediately below Ruth, and he turned and looked up at her where she sat in the fork of the limb. Her face had been burning ever since she had been discovered, and was burning now; but she could not help being amused at the expression which came into the stranger’s eyes as he looked at her. Astonishment, chagrin, and amusement were all stamped there, mingled together.
“What on earth!—I beg your pardon—” he began, his eyes wide open with surprise, gazing straight into hers. The next instant he burst out laughing, a peal so full of real mirth that Ruth joined in and laughed with all her might too.
“I’m Captain Allen, Steve Allen—and you are——?”
“Miss Welch—when I’m at home.”
He pulled himself up to the limb on which Ruth sat and coolly seated himself near her.
“I hope you will be at home—Miss Welch; for I am. I used to be very much at home in this tree in old times, which is my excuse for being here now, though I confess I never found quite such fruit on it as it seems to bear to-day.”
The twinkle in his gray eyes and a something in his lazy voice reminded Ruth of Reely Thurston. The last part of his speech to her sounded partly as if he meant it, but partly as if lie were half poking fun at her and wished to see how she would take it. She tried to meet him on his own ground.