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Barbara Ladd

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2017
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"Then you shall have one kiss – no, two!" said Doctor John, picking her up.

"Ten – twenty – a hundred!" insisted the child, hugging him violently.

"There! there! Enough is as good as a feast!" interrupted Doctor John, presently, untwining her arms and setting her down. Then, Doctor Jim holding one of her hands and Doctor John the other, she skipped gaily up the path toward the house, like a wisp of light dancing between their giant bulks.

At this moment the figure of Mistress Mehitable appeared on the porch; and Barbara felt suddenly abashed. A realisation of all that had occurred, all she had done, all she had suffered, rushed over her. Her little fingers shut like steel upon the great, comforting hands that held them, and the colour for a moment faded out of her cheeks. Doctor John and Doctor Jim both felt the pang of emotion that darted through her. She felt, rather than saw, that their big faces leaned above her tenderly. But she did not want them to speak. She was afraid they might not say the right thing. She felt that she must say something at once, to divert their attention from her plight. She looked around desperately and caught sight, in the barnyard behind her, of the hired man milking the vicious red 'mooley' cow that would not let Abby milk her.

"Why!" she exclaimed, with a vast show of interest and surprise, "there's Amos milking Mooley!"

On the instant she recognised the bald irrelevancy of the remark, and wished she had not spoken. But Doctor John turned his head, eyed Amos with critical consideration, and said:

"Goodness gracious! why, so it is! Now, do you know, I should have expected to see the parson, or Squire Gillig, milking Mooley. Dear me, dear me!"

At this, though the deeper half of her heart was sick with apprehensive emotion, the other half was irresistibly titillated, and she laughed hysterically; while Doctor Jim emitted a vast, appreciative guffaw. Before anything more could be said, the voice of Mistress Mehitable came from the porch, kindly sweet, familiar, and cadenced as if no cataclysms whatever had lately shaken the world.

"Supper is waiting," she said, and smiled upon them gently as they approached.

"We come, fair mistress!" responded Doctor Jim, modulating his voice to a deferential softness.

"We come – and here we are," broke out Doctor John, snatching up Barbara, dashing forward, and thrusting her into her aunt's not unwilling arms.

It was a wise device to surmount the difficulty of the meeting.

"I am truly most glad to see you, my dear child," said Mistress Mehitable, earnestly, pressing Barbara to her heart and kissing her on the forehead. Barbara looked up, searched her aunt's face piercingly for a second, saw that the gentle blue eyes were something red and swollen with weeping, and impulsively lifted her lips to be kissed.

"I am sorry I grieved you, Aunt Hitty," she whispered, "I'll try hard not to."

Mistress Mehitable kissed her again, almost impetuously, gave her a squeeze of understanding, and with her arm over the child's shoulder led the way in to supper.

CHAPTER VI

After this upheaval there was better understanding for a time between Barbara and Mistress Mehitable. The lady made an honest effort to allow for some of the differences in the point of view of a child brought up on a Maryland plantation, under another creed, and spoiled from the cradle. She tried, also, to allow for the volcanic and alien strain which mingled in Barbara's veins with the well-ordered blood of the Ladds. But this alien strain was something she instinctively resented and instinctively longed to subdue. Moreover, she lacked imagination; and therefore, with the most sincere good purpose on both sides, the peace between herself and Barbara was but superficial, demanding the price of ceaseless vigilance. Barbara, on her part, strove to be more diligent with her tasks, and greatly conciliated Mistress Mehitable by her swift progress in plain sewing, penmanship, and playing on the harpsichord; and she quickly learned to read aloud with a charm and a justness of emphasis which her aunt never wearied of commending. But with the elaborate Dresden embroidery and intricate lace-making, and the flummery art of "papyrotamia" – a cutting of paper flowers – which then occupied the leisure of young maids of gentle breeding, Barbara had no patience at all. She scorned and hated them – and she purchased her release from them by electing rather the rigid and exacting pursuit of Latin grammar, which only masculine intellects were considered competent to acquire. In this she had had some grounding from her father; and now, under the sympathetic tuition of Doctor John, she found its strenuous intricacies a satisfaction to her restless brain, and made such progress as to compel the reluctant commendation of the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer himself.

Meanwhile, seeing the restraint under which the child was holding herself, Mistress Mehitable tried to moderate to some degree her disapproval of Barbara's vagaries and impetuosities, so that sometimes her wild rides, her canoeings at unseemly hours, her consortings with old Debby, her incorrigible absences from the noonday board, were suffered to go almost unrebuked. But it was a perennial vexation to Mistress Mehitable to observe Barbara's haughty indifference to the other young girls of her own class in the township, who were her fitting associates and might have redeemed her from her wildness; while, on the other hand, she insisted on making an intimate of Mercy Chapman, the daughter of Doctor John's hired man. Barbara found all the girls whom her aunt approved hopelessly uninteresting – prim, docile, pious, uninformed, addicted to tatting, excited over feather-work. But Mercy Chapman was fearless, adventurous within her limits, protectingly acquainted with all the birds' nests in the neighbourhood, and passionately fond of animals, especially horses and cats. Mercy Chapman, therefore, was admitted very cordially to certain outer chambers of Barbara's heart; while the daughters of Squire Grannis and Lawyer Perley were treated to a blank indifference which amounted to incivility, and excited the excoriating comment of their mammas.

Another severe trial to Mistress Mehitable's patience was Barbara's unhousewifely aversion to the kitchen. She vowed she could not abide the smell of cooking in her hair, averring that all cooks carried the savour of the frying-pan. When her aunt pointed out how humiliated she would be when she came to have a house of her own, she declared there would be time enough to learn when that day threatened; and she stoutly asseverated, moreover, that she could cook without learning. Upon this rash claim Mistress Mehitable pinned her to a test, being minded to abase her for her soul's good; but she emerged from the trial with vast accession of prestige, doing up sundry tasty desserts with a readiness born of past interest in the arcana of her father's kitchen by the Pawtuxet. But for all her aunt's exhortations she would explore no further in the domain of bake-pan and skillet. There was antagonism, moreover, between Barbara and Abby, to the point that if Mistress Mehitable had prevailed with her niece in this matter, she would have found herself obliged to change her cook.

There was one department of the household economy, however, in which Barbara was ever ready to meet her aunt half-way. It furnished a common ground, whereon many a threatened rupture was averted, or at least postponed. This was the still-room.

Barbara adored cleanliness and sweet smells. The clean, fragrant place, wherein bundles of herbs whose odours spoke to her of the South, and of strange lands, and of longed-for, half-forgotten dreams, and of desires which she could not understand, was to her a temple of enchanting mysteries.

Now Mistress Mehitable was a cunning distiller of the waters of bergamot, rosemary, mint, thyme, and egrimony; but Barbara developed a subtlety in the combining of herbs and simples which resulted in perfumes hitherto unknown. One essence, indeed, which she compounded, proved so penetrating, lasting, and exquisite, that her aunt, in a burst of staid enthusiasm, suggested that she should name it and write down the formula for security. This was done, to Barbara's great pride; and thereafter the "Water of Maryland Memories" became the proper thing to use in Second Westings. Nothing, perhaps, did more to make Barbara a personage in the township than this highly approved "Water of Maryland Memories."

In this way the days passed, so that at times Mistress Mehitable had hopes that the child was going to assimilate herself, and cease to pine for her plantation in the South. In reality, the rebellion in Barbara's soul but grew the stronger as her nature deepened and matured. Throughout her second spring at Second Westings, – when the mounting sap set her veins athrill in unison, and she saw the violets come back to the greening meadows, the quaker-ladies and the windflowers to the little glades of the wood; and the wild ducks returned from the south to nest by the lake, and the blackbirds chirred again in the swaying tops of the pine-trees, – her spirit chafed more fiercely at every bar. The maddest rides over upland field and pasture lot at dawn, the fiercest paddlings up and down the lake when the wind was driving and the chop sea tried her skill, were insufficient vent to her restlessness. Her thoughts kept reverting, in spite of herself, to the idea of seeking her uncle. Misunderstandings with Mistress Mehitable grew more frequent and more perilous. But just as she was beginning to feel that something desperate must happen at once, there came to her a responsibility which for a time diverted her thoughts.

The kitchen cat presented the household with four kittens. Having a well-grounded suspicion that kittens were a superfluity in Second Westings, the mother hid her furry miracles in the recesses of a loft in the barn. Not until their eyes were well open were they discovered; and it was Barbara who discovered them. With joyous indiscretion, all undreaming of the consequences, she proclaimed her discovery in the house. Then the customary stern decree went forth – but in this case tempered with fractional mercy, seeing that Mistress Mehitable was a just woman. One was spared to console the mother, and three were doomed to death.

Barbara, all undreaming of the decree, chanced to come upon Amos in the cow-shed, standing over a tub of water. She saw him drop a kitten into the tub, and pick up the next. She heard the faint mewing of the victims. For one instant her heart stood still with pain and fury. Then, speechless, but with face and eyes ablaze, she swooped down and sprang upon him with such impetuous violence that, bending over as he was, he lost his balance and sprawled headlong, upsetting the tub as he fell. As the flood went all abroad, sousing Amos effectually, Barbara snatched up the dripping and struggling mewer, clutched it to her bosom, seized the basket containing the other two, burst into wild tears, fled to the house, and shut herself into her room with her treasures. Straightway realising, however, that they would not be safe even there, she darted forth again, defying her aunt's efforts to stop her, ran to the woods, and hid them in the secret hollow of an old tree. Knowing that Amos would never have committed the enormity at his own instance, she hastened to make her peace with him, – which was easy, Amos being at heart her slave, – with a view to getting plenty of milk for the tiny prisoners; but against Mistress Mehitable her wrath burned hotly. She stayed out till long past supper, and crept to bed without speaking to any one – hungry save for warm milk supplied by Amos.

This was an open subversion of authority, and Mistress Mehitable was moved. In the morning she demanded the surrender of the kittens. Barbara fiercely refused. Then discipline was threatened – a whipping, perhaps, since duty must be done, however hard – or imprisonment in her room for a week. Barbara had a vision of the kittens slowly starving in their hollow tree, and her face set itself in a way that gave Mistress Mehitable pause, suggesting tragedies. The next moment Barbara rushed from the room, flew bareheaded down the street, burst into Doctor Jim's office, and announced that she would kill herself rather than go back to her Aunt Hitty. Past events precluding the possibility of this being disregarded as an idle threat, it was perforce taken seriously. Doctor John was summoned. The situation was thrashed out in all its bearings; and finally, while Barbara curled herself up in a tired heap on the lounge and went to sleep, her two champions went to confer with Mistress Mehitable. Hard in this case was the task, for the little lady considered a principle at stake; but they came back at last triumphant. Barbara was to be allowed to retain the kittens, on the pledge that she would keep them from becoming in any way a nuisance to the rest of the house, and that she would, as soon as possible, find homes elsewhere for at least two of them. This last condition might have troubled her, but that Doctor John and Doctor Jim both winked as they announced it, which she properly interpreted to mean that they, being catless and mouse-ridden, would help her.

So Barbara went back to Aunt Hitty – who received her gravely; and the kittens came back from their hollow tree; and the shock of clashing spheres was averted. But the peace was a hollow and precarious one – an armistice, rather than a peace. For about a week Barbara's heart and hands were pretty well occupied by her little charges, and Mistress Mehitable found her conciliatory. But one day there came a letter from Uncle Bob, accompanied by a box which contained macaroons and marchpanes, candied angelica, a brooch of garnets, and a piece of watchet-blue paduasoy sufficient to make Barbara a dress. The letter announced that Uncle Bob was at Bridgeport, and about to sojourn for a time at the adjoining village of Stratford. Why, Stratford was in Connecticut – it could not be very far from Second Westings! Barbara's heart throbbed with excitement. The very next day she made excuse to visit Lawyer Perley, and consult a map of the Connecticut colony which she had once observed in his office. She noted the way the rivers ran – and her heart beat more wildly than ever. Just at this point conscience awoke. She put the dangerous thought away vehemently, and for a whole week was most studious to please. But Mistress Mehitable was still austere, still troubled in her heart as to whether she had done right about the kittens. One morning just after breakfast Barbara was set to hemming a fine linen napkin, at a time when she was in haste to be at something else more interesting. She scamped the uncongenial task – in very truth, the stitches were shocking. Hence came an unpleasantness. Barbara was sent to her room to meditate for an hour. She was now all on fire with revolt. Escape seemed within reach. She meditated to such purpose that when her hour was past she came forth smiling, and went about her affairs with gay diligence.

It was on the following morning that, when the first pallor of dawn touched the tree-tops, she climbed out of the window, down the apple-tree, and fled with her bundle and her kittens.

CHAPTER VII

After her breakfast at old Debby's, Barbara urged forward her canoe with keen exhilaration. Now was she really free, really advanced in her great adventure. A load of anxiety was lifted from her mind. She had succeeded in arranging so that the letter would be delivered to her aunt – a matter which had been fretting at her conscience. Moreover, old Debby had shown no surprise or disapproval on hearing of her rash venture. It nettled Barbara, indeed, to have so heroic an enterprise taken so lightly; but she augured therefrom that it was more feasible than she had dared to hope, and already she saw herself installed as mistress of Uncle Bob's home in Stratford.

"He'll love us, my babies!" she cried to the kittens in the basket, and forthwith plied her paddle so feverishly that in a few minutes she had to stop and take breath.

The river at this point wound through low meadows, sparsely treed with the towering, majestic water poplar, sycamore, and arching elm, with here and there a graceful river birch leaning pensively to contemplate its reflection in the stream. The trees and flowers were personal to Barbara, her quick senses differentiating them unerringly. The low meadow, swampy in spots, was a mass of herbs, shrubs, and rank grasses, for the most part now in full flower; and the sun was busy distilling from them all their perfumes, which came to Barbara's nostrils in warm, fitful, varying puffs. She noted the tenderly flushing feathery masses of meadowsweet, which she could never quite forgive for its lack of the perfume promised by its name. From the dry knolls came the heavy scent of the tall, bold umbels of the wild parsnip, at which she sniffed with passing resentment. Another breath of wind, and a turn of the stream into a somewhat less open neighbourhood, brought her a sweet and well-loved savour, and she half rose in her place to greet the presence of a thicket of swamp honeysuckle. She noted, as she went, pale crimson colonies of the swamp rose, hummed over softly by the bees and flies. Purple Jacob's-ladder draped the bushes luxuriantly, with wild clematis in lavish banks, and aerial stretches of the roseate monkey-flower on its almost invisible stems. Her heart went out to a cluster of scented snakemouth under the rim of the bank. She was about to turn her prow shoreward and gather the modest pinkish blossoms for their enchanting fragrance, when she observed leaning above them her mortal enemy among the tree-folk, the virulent poison sumac. She swerved sharply to the other side of the stream to avoid its hostile exhalations.

The little river now widened out and became still more sluggish. A narrow meadow island in mid-stream intoxicated Barbara's eyes with colour, being fringed with rank on rank of purple flag-flower, and its grassy heart flame-spotted with the blooms of the wild lily. The still water along the shores was crowded with floating-heart, and pale-blossomed arrowhead, and blue, rank pickerel-weed; and Barbara, who did not mind the heat, but revelled in the carnival of colour, drew a deep breath and declared to herself (giving the flat lie to ten thousand former assertions of the like intimacy) that the world was a beautiful place to live in. No sooner had she said it than her heart sank under a flood of bitter memories. She seemed once more to feel the water singing in her ears, to see its golden blur filling her eyes, as on that morning when she lay drowning in the lake. The glory of the summer day lost something of its brightness, and she paddled on doggedly, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left.

But this was a mood that could not long hold dominion over Barbara's spirit on this day of days, when she was journeying to freedom. It took no more than the scarlet flash of a tanager across her bow, the flapping of a startled brood of ducks from their covert in the sedge, to lure her back to gladness and the seeing eye. At last the river carried her into quite different surroundings. Still slow, and smooth, and deep, it entered the neighbourhood of great trees growing close, the ancient and unviolated forest. The day grew cool and solemn, the diffused light floating hushed under the great arches of brown and gray and green. By contrast it seemed dark, but the air was of a wonderful transparency, and Barbara's eyes, opening wide in delicious awe, saw everything more distinctly than in the open. She whispered to the yellow birch, the paper birch, the beech, the maple, and the chestnut, each by name lovingly, as she slipped past their soaring trunks, knowing them by the texture and the features of their bark though their leaves hung far overhead. Her paddle dipped without noise, lest the mysteries of the forest conclave should be disturbed by her intrusion. So keen and so initiated were her young eyes that she discerned the sleeping nighthawk on his branch, where his likeness to a knotted excrescence of the bark made him feel secure from the most discriminating vision. Passing a dead pine with a small, neatly rounded hole about ten feet up the trunk, she heard, or thought she heard, the safe conferring of the nest full of young woodpeckers in its hollow depth – which, indeed, was probably but the stirring of her own blood-currents within her over-attentive little ears. Suddenly the vast stillness appeared to close down upon her, not with oppression, but with a calm that was half fearful, half delicious; and it seemed as if the fever of her veins was being slowly drawn away. The mystic shores slipped by with speed, though she hardly knew she was paddling. And when, suddenly, a great brown owl dropped from a beech limb and went winnowing soundlessly down the stream ahead of her, she caught her breath, feeling as if the soul of the silence had taken palpable shape before her eyes.

Now, as it seemed to Barbara, life and movement began to appear, at the summons of those shadowy wings. A little troop of pale-winged moths drifted, circling lightly, over the stream; and a fly-catcher, with thin, cheeping cries, dropped some twenty feet straight downward from an overhanging limb, fluttered and zigzagged for a moment in mid-air, capturing some small insect darters which Barbara could not see, then shot back into the leafage. Then upon a massive, sloping maple-branch close to the bank, she saw a stocky black-and-white shape slowly crawling. The head was small and flattened, the bright little eyes glittered upon her in defiance, and a formidable ridge of pointed quills erected itself angrily along the back. The animal uttered a low, squeaking grunt, and Barbara, with prompt discretion, steered as close as possible to the opposite bank, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder as she passed. She was strongly inclined to like the porcupine; but his ill-temper was manifest, and she had faith in the superstition that he could shoot his needle-like quills to a distance and pierce the object of his dislike. Barbara could not contemplate the possibility of appearing before her uncle like a pin-cushion, stuck full of porcupine quills.

Barely had she left the resentful porcupine behind, safely out of quill-flinging distance, when she observed a small, ruddy head cleaving the water in mid-channel. A pair of prominent eyes met hers apprehensively. Two smooth ripples curved away from the throat of the small swimmer. It was a red squirrel whom unwonted affairs had summoned to the other side of the river. Whatever the affairs, Barbara was determined to expedite them as far as she could. Overtaking the swimmer with a couple of smart strokes, she politely held out to him the blade of the paddle. The invitation was not to be resisted. With a scramble and a leap he came aboard, skipped along the gunwale, and perched himself, jaunty and chipper for all his bedragglement of tail, on the extreme tip of the bow. There he twitched and chattered eagerly, while Barbara headed toward the shore where he would be. While he was yet a wide space distant from it, he sprang into the air. Barbara held her breath – but the little traveller knew his powers. He landed safely on a projecting root, flicked off behind a tree, and was gone. In a few seconds there came echoing from a tree-top far back in the shadows a loud, shrill chattering, which Barbara took for an expression of either gratitude or impudence. Caring not which it was, she smiled indulgently and paddled on.

And now to her sensitive nostrils there came suddenly an elusive wafture of wintergreen, and she looked around for the gray birch whose message she recognised. The homely, familiar smell reclaimed her from her mood of exaltation, and she realised that she was hungry. Just ahead was a grassy glade, whereinto the sun streamed broadly. She saw that it was far past noon. With a leap of the heart she realised that she must be nearing the point where the stream would join the great river which was to bear her, her kittens, and her fortunes, down to the sea and Uncle Bob. Yes, she recognised this same open glade, with the giant willow projecting over the water at its farther end. She and Uncle Bob had both remarked upon its fairy beauty as they passed it going and coming, when they had explored the stream. She had but two or three miles farther to go, and her paddle would greet the waters of the great river. This was fitting place to halt and renew her strength.

Pulling up the prow of the canoe upon a tuft of sedge, she took out the basket and the bundle. From the heart of the bundle she drew a small leather bag, containing barley cakes, gingerbread, a tiny parcel of cold meat done up in oiled paper, a wooden saucer, and a little wooden bottle which she had filled with fresh milk at old Debby's. Having poured some of the milk into the saucer, and laid three or four shreds of the meat around its edges, she released the kittens from their basket. For two or three minutes, glad of freedom, the fat, furry things frisked and stretched and tumbled hither and thither, while Barbara kept watch upon them with solicitous eyes. But soon they grew afraid of the great spaces and the woods, being accustomed to an environment more straitened. They came back mewing to Barbara's feet, and she turned their attention to their dinner. While they lapped the milk, and daintily chewed the unaccustomed meat, she dined heartily but abstractedly on the barley cakes and gingerbread. Then, having satisfied her thirst by lying flat on the wet, grassy brink of the stream and lowering her lips to the water, she decided to rest a few minutes before resuming her voyage. Close by was a beech-tree, around whose trunk the moss looked tempting. Seating herself with her back against the tree, and the kittens curled up in her lap, she looked out dreamily over the hot grasses – and presently fell asleep.

She had slept perhaps half an hour when a crow, alighting on a low branch some half score paces distant, peered into the shade of the beech-tree and discovered the sweet picture. To him it was not sweet in the least, but indubitably interesting. "Cah – ah!" he exclaimed loudly, hopping up and down in his astonishment. The sharp voice awoke Barbara, and she rubbed her eyes.

"Gracious!" she exclaimed to the kittens, "what sleepyheads we are! Come, come, we must hurry up, or we'll never get to Uncle Bob!"

Before she was really well awake, the kittens were in the basket, the canoe was loaded and shoved off, and the adventurers were once more afloat upon their quest. Then only did Barbara give herself time to stretch and rub her eyes. After a few strokes she let the canoe drift with the current, while she laid down the paddle, and cooled her wrists and refreshed her face with handfuls of water.

As she straightened her brave little shoulders again to her labour, she was arrested by a strange sound as of the ripping of bark. It was an ominous kind of noise in the lonely stillness, and apprehensively she peered in the direction whence it came. Then she grew afraid. On the other shore, about a couple of rods back from the water, she saw a large black bear sitting upon its haunches beside a fallen and rotten tree. As she stared, wide-eyed and trembling, he lifted his great paw and laid hold of the dead bark. Again came the ripping, tearing noise, and off peeled a huge brown slab. To the exposed surface he applied a nimble tongue – and Barbara's terror subsided. She saw that he was quite too absorbed in the delights of an ant-log to pay any attention to a mere girl; and she remembered, too, that the black bear was a rather inoffensive soul so long as he was not treated contumeliously. For all this, however, she made as much haste from the spot as was consistent with a noiseless paddle – and kept furtive watch over her shoulder until she had put a good half-mile between the canoe and the ant-log.

By the time her concern about the bear had begun to flag she found that the current was quickening its pace. The trees slipped by more swiftly, and the shores grew bolder. A mellow, roaring clamour came to her ears, and with delicious trepidation she remembered a little rapid through which she must pass. Around a turn of the stream it came into view, its small waves sparkling where the forest gave back and admitted the afternoon sun. Her experience in running rapids had been slight, but she remembered the course which Uncle Bob had taken, between two large rocks where the water ran deep and smooth; and she called to mind, the further to brace her confidence, that Uncle Bob had stigmatised this particular rapid as mere child's play. Her heart beat rather wildly as she entered the broken water, and the currents gripped her, and the banks began to flee upward past her view. But her eye held true and her wrist firm. The clamour filled her ears, but she laid her course with precision and fetched the very centre of the channel between the big rocks. From that point all was clear. The canoe went racing through the last ripple, which splashed her lightly as she passed; and in a reach of quiet water, foam-flecked and shining, she drew a deep breath of triumph. This, indeed, was to live. Never had she experienced a keener consciousness of power. She felt her enterprise already successful. The ancient woods, with their bears, their porcupines, their wide-winged brown owls, lay behind her. Second Westings was incalculably far away. There in plain view, rising over its comfortable orchard trees, not half a mile distant, were the roofs and chimneys of Gault House, overlooking, as she had heard, the waters of the great river. And beyond the next turn, as she thought with a thrill, she would see the great river itself.

CHAPTER VIII

Barbara rounded the next turn. There before her, widely gleaming, spread the waters of the great river itself. She cried out in her joy, and paddled madly – then paused, abashed, perceiving that she was the 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?"
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