certainly did resemble that girl–she had the same bluish violet eyes, the same white and deeply fringed lids, the same free grace of carriage, a trifle too boyish at times–the same firmly rounded, yet slender, figure.
"Now, as a matter of fact," he mused aloud, stroking the sleeping squirrel on his knee, "I could have fallen in love with either of those girls–before Copper blew up."
Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes of that waking Aphrodite in the Luxembourg. If she would only just look at me once instead of looking through me when we pass one another in the hall–"
The deadened gallop of a horse on the bridle path caught his ear. The horse was coming fast–almost too fast. He laid the sleeping squirrel on the bench, listened, then instinctively stood up and walked to the thicket's edge.
What happened was too quick for him to comprehend; he had a vision of a big black horse, mane and tail in the wind, tearing madly, straight at him–a glimpse of a white face, desperate and set, a flutter of loosened hair; then a storm of wind and sand roared in his ears; he was hurled, jerked, and flung forward, dragged, shaken, and left half senseless, hanging to nose and bit of a horse whose rider was picking herself out of a bush covered with white flowers.
Half senseless still, he tightened his grip on the bit, released the grasp on the creature's nose, and, laying his hand full on the forelock, brought it down twice and twice across the eyes, talking to the horse in halting, broken whispers.
When he had the trembling animal under control he looked around; the girl stood on the grass, dusty, dirty, disheveled, bleeding from a cut on the cheek bone; the most bewildered and astonished creature he had ever looked upon.
"It will be all right in a few minutes," he said, motioning her to the bench on the asphalt walk. She nodded, turned, picked up his hat, and, seating herself, began to smooth the furred nap with her sleeve, watching him intently all the while. That he already had the confidence of a horse that he had never before seen was perfectly apparent. Little by little the sweating, quivering limbs were stilled, the tense muscles in the neck relaxed, the head sank, dusty velvet lips nibbled at his hand, his shoulder; the heaving, sunken flanks filled and grew quiet.
Bareheaded, his attire in disorder and covered with slaver and sand, the young man laid the bridle on the horse's neck, held out his hand, and, saying "Come," turned his back and walked down the bridle path. The horse stretched a sweating neck, sniffed, pricked forward both small ears, and slowly followed, turning as the man turned, up and down, crowding at heel like a trained dog, finally stopping on the edge of the walk.
The young man looped the bridle over a low maple limb, and leaving the horse standing sauntered over to the bench.
"That horse," he said pleasantly, "is all right now; but the question is, are you all right?"
She rose, handing him his hat, and began to twist up her bright hair. For a few moments' silence they were frankly occupied in restoring order to raiment, dusting off gravel and examining rents.
"I'm tremendously grateful," she said abruptly.
"I am, too," he said in that attractive manner which sets people of similar caste at ease with one another.
"Thank you; it's a generous compliment, considering your hat and clothing."
He looked up; she stood twisting her hair and doing her best with the few remaining hair pegs.
"I'm a sight for little fishes," she said, coloring. "Did that wretched beast bruise you?"
"Oh, no–"
"You limped!"
"Did I?" he said vaguely. "How do you feel?"
"There is," she said, "a curious, breathless flutter all over me; if that is fright, I suppose I'm frightened, but I don't mind mounting at once– if you would put me up–"
"Better wait a bit," he said; "it would not do to have that horse feel a fluttering pulse, telegraphing along the snaffle. Tell me, are you spurred?"
She lifted the hem of her habit; two small spurs glittered on her polished boot heels.
"That's it, you see," he observed; "you probably have not ridden cross saddle very long. When your mount swerved you spurred, and he bolted, bit in teeth."
"That's exactly it," she admitted, looking ruefully at her spurs. Then she dropped her skirt, glanced interrogatively at him, and, obeying his grave gesture, seated herself again upon the bench.
"Don't stand," she said civilly. He took the other end of the seat, lifting the still slumbering squirrel to his knee.
"I–I haven't said very much," she began; "I'm impulsive enough to be overgrateful and say too much. I hope you understand me; do you?"
"Of course; you're very good. It was nothing; you could have stopped your horse yourself. People do that sort of thing for one another as a matter of course."
"But not at the risk you took–"
"No risk at all," he said hastily.
She thought otherwise, and thought it so fervently that, afraid of emotion, she turned her cold, white profile to him and studied her horse, haughty lids adroop. The same insolent sweetness was in her eyes when they again reverted to him. He knew the look; he had encountered it often enough in the hallway and on the stairs. He knew, too, that she must recognize him; yet, under the circumstances, it was for her to speak first; and she did not, for she was at that age when horror of overdoing anything chokes back the scarcely extinguished childish instinct to say too much. In other words, she was eighteen and had had her first season the winter past–the winter when he had not been visible among the gatherings of his own kind.
"Those squirrels are very tame," she observed calmly.
"Not always," he said. "Try to hold this one, for example."
She raised her pretty eyebrows, then accepted the lump of fluffy fur from his hands. Instantly an electric shock seemed to set the squirrel frantic, there was a struggle, a streak of gray and white, and the squirrel leaped from her lap and fairly flew down the asphalt path.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed faintly; "what was the matter?"
"Some squirrels are very wild," he said innocently.
"I know–but you held him–he was asleep on your knee. Why didn't he stay with me?"
"Oh, perhaps because I have a way with animals."
"With horses, too," she added gayly. And the smile breaking from her violet eyes silenced him in the magic of a beauty he had never dreamed of. At first she mistook his silence for modesty; then–because even as young a maid as she is quick to divine and fine of instinct–she too fell silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived–a gentleman, a man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.
"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up. There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."
"Are you quite sure?"
"Perfectly."
They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.
"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can mount without troubling you–" She set her toe to the stirrup which he held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks, awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.
Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears–for perhaps he had saved her neck–and perhaps not. Busy with curb and snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive, dreading to expose youth and inexperience