Caleb halted at the corner of the green. He had never in this world seen anything so graceful as that lithe figure moving actively about in the clear sunlight casting the clothes over the lines, now reaching up on tiptoe to place a peg in some high place, and again whipping up her basket and marching farther along with it.
She had covered one long line and taken a clothes-pole to raise it. That was a feat of strength, and Caleb sprang to her side.
‘Let me do that for you, Pansy.’
‘Gracious!’ was the startled exclamation; and at the same moment he planted the pole upright, the clothes thus forming a screen between them and the vine-house where Sam Culver was at work.
‘You didn’t expect to see me here at this time of day,’ he said, laughing, but already beginning to feel awkward, and looking everywhere except where he most desired to look—in her face. ‘I had to come down for this box; and as there was time enough, I thought I’d come round this way.’
She laughed a little, too, at her scare, and then began to hang out more clothes on another line as hastily as if she had not a minute to spare. He looked on, his eyes glancing away whenever she turned towards him. She also began to feel a little awkward, and somehow she did not fasten the pegs on the line with such deft firmness as she had done before he made his presence known.
‘Father is in the vine-house,’ she said by-and-by, compelled to seek relief by saying something.
‘I wish you would let me do something for you,’ was his inconsequent reply.
‘Something for me!’
‘Yes, carry the basket—anything.’