LITMIR.BIZ

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object of a critical but frankly admiring scrutiny. Her attention was diverted from the great river. Here was a tall boy – of her own caste unmistakably – poling himself out on a precarious little raft to meet her. Her flush of confusion passed as quickly as it had come, and laying her paddle across the gunwale, she waited with interest to discover what he might have to say.

      Barbara had met but few boys of her own class, and those few had seemed, under her merciless analysis, uniformly uninteresting. Their salient characteristics, to her mind, were freckles, rudeness, ignorance, and a disposition to tease cats. But this youth was obviously different. Apparently about seventeen years of age, he was tall and graceful, and the way the clumsy log-raft on which he stood surged forward under the thrusts of his pole revealed his strength. Barbara loved strength, so long as delicacy saved it from coarseness. The boy was in his shirt sleeves, which were of spotless cambric, and Barbara noted, with approbation, the ample ruffles turned back, for convenience, from his sinewy brown hands. She observed that his brown, long-fronted, flowered vest was of silk, and his lighter brown small-clothes of a fine cloth worn only by the gentry; that his stockings were of black silk, and his shoes, drenched most of the time in the water that lapped over the raft, were adorned with large buckles of silver. She admired the formal fashion in which his black hair was tied back in a small and very precise queue. But most of all she liked his face, which was even darker than her own – lean, somewhat square in the jaw, with a broad forehead, and gray-blue, thoughtful eyes, set wide apart.

      Now, Barbara's fearless scorn of conventions was equalled only by her ignorance of them. This boy pleased her, so why should she hesitate to show it? When the raft ranged up alongside the canoe, she laid hold upon it for anchorage and the greater convenience in conversation, and flashed upon the stranger the full dazzle of her scarlet lips, white teeth, and bewildering radiance of green eyes. The boy straightened himself from the pole in order to bow with the more ceremony – which he accomplished to Barbara's complete satisfaction in spite of the unsteadiness of the raft.

      "What a nice-looking boy you are!" she said, frankly condescending. "What is your name?"

      "Robert Gault, your very humble servant!" he replied, bowing again, and smiling. The smile was altogether to Barbara's fancy, and showed even, strong, white teeth, another most uncommon merit in a boy. "And I am sure," he went on, "that this is Mistress Barbara Ladd whom I have the honour to address."

      "Why, how do you know me?" exclaimed Barbara, highly pleased. Then, quickly apprehensive, she added, "What makes you think I am Barbara Ladd?"

      The boy noted the change in her countenance, and wondered at it. But he replied at once:

      "Of course the name of Mistress Barbara Ladd, and her daring, and her canoe-craft, and her beauty" (this he added out of his own instant conviction), "have spread far down the river. When I came up here the other day to visit my grandmother" (he indicated slightly the distant roofs of Gault House), "I came with a great hope of being permitted to meet you!"

      Evidently he knew nothing of her flight. Her uneasiness vanished. But she had never had a compliment before – a personal compliment, such as is dear to every wise feminine heart – and that word "beauty" was most melodious to her ears. As a matter of fact, she did not herself admire her own appearance at all, and even had an aversion to the mirror – but it occurred to her now, for the first time, that this was a point upon which it was not needful that every one should agree with her. It was practically her first real lesson in tolerance toward an opinion that differed from her own.

      "I'll warrant you heard no good of that same Barbara Ladd, more's the pity!" she answered, coquettishly tossing her dark little head and shooting at him a distracting sidelong glance from narrowed lids. "Anyhow, if you are Lady Gault's grandson, I am most happy to meet you."

      She stretched out to him her brown little hand, just now none too immaculate, indeed, but with breeding stamped on every slim line of it, and eloquent from the polished, well-trimmed, long, oval nails. Instantly, careless of the water and his fine cloth breeches, Robert went down upon one knee and gallantly kissed the proffered hand.

      Barbara was just at an age when, for girls with Southern blood in their veins, womanhood and childhood lie so close entwined in their personalities that it is impossible to disentangle the golden and the silver threads. Never before had any one kissed her hand. She was surprised at the pleasant thrill it gave her; and she was surprised, too, at her sudden, inexplicable impulse to draw the hand away. It was a silly impulse, she told herself; so she controlled it, and accepted the kiss with the composure of a damsel well used to such ceremonious homage. But she did not like such a nice boy to be kneeling in the water.

      "Why did you come out on that rickety thing?" she asked. "Why haven't you a boat or a canoe?"

      "This was the only thing within reach," he explained, respectfully relinquishing her hand. "I saw you coming; and I knew it must be you, because no other girl could handle a canoe so beautifully; and I was afraid of losing you if I waited."

      "That was civil of you. But aren't you getting very wet there? Won't you come into the canoe?"

      "Really?" he exclaimed, lifting his chin with a quick gesture of eagerness. "Are you going to be so good to me? Then I must push this old raft ashore first and secure it. I don't know whom it belongs to."

      As he poled to land in too much haste for any further conversation, Barbara paddled silently alongside and admired his skill. When the raft was tied up, and the pole tossed into the bushes, he took his place in the bow and knelt so as to face her.

      "You must turn the other way," laughed Barbara.

      "No, I was proposing, by your leave, to make this the stern, and ask you to let me paddle," he answered. "Won't you let me? You really look a little bit tired, and I want you to talk to me, if you will be so condescending. How can I turn my back to you?"

      "I am not the least, leastest bit tired," protested Barbara, a little doubtfully. "But I don't mind letting you paddle for awhile, if you'll paddle hard and go the way I want you to." And with that she seated herself flat on the bottom of the canoe, with an air of relief that rather contradicted her protestation.

      The boy laughed, as he turned the canoe with powerful, sweeping strokes.

      "Surely I will paddle hard, and in whatsoever direction you command me. Am I not the most obedient of your slaves?"

      This pleased Barbara. She loved slaves. She accepted his servitude at once and fully.

      "Paddle straight out into the river, and then down!" she commanded.

      At the imperious note in her voice, the boy looked both amused and pleased. Obeying without a word of question, he sent the canoe leaping forward under his deep, rhythmical strokes at a speed that filled Barbara with admiration.

      "Oh, how strong you are and how well you paddle!" she cried, her eyes wide and sparkling, her lips parted, the crisp, rebellious curls blowing about her face. Never had Robert seen so bewitching a picture as this small figure curled up happily in the bow of the canoe, her little shoes of red leather and her black-stockinged ankles sticking out demurely from under her short blue striped skirt, her nut-brown, slender, finely modelled arms emerging from short loose sleeves. He was proud of her praise. He was partly engrossed in displaying his skill and strength to the very best advantage. But above all he was thinking of this picture, which was destined to flash back into his memory many a time in after days, with a poignancy of vividness that affected his action like a summons or an appeal.

      In a few minutes the canoe was fairly out upon the bosom of the main stream, and headed downward with the strongly flowing current. Barbara clasped her hands with a movement which expressed such rapture and relief that the boy's curiosity was excited. He began to feel that there was some mystery in the affair. Slackening his pace ever so slightly, he remarked:

      "I suppose you are staying with friends somewhere in this neighbourhood. How fortunate I am – that is, if you will graciously permit me to go canoeing with you often while you are here."

      But even as he spoke, his eyes took in, for the first time, the significance of the bundle and the basket, which he had been so far too occupied to notice. His wonder came forward and spoke plainly from his frank eyes, and Barbara was at a loss to explain.

      "No,"

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