"Oh, Kilday is good enough in his place. He's a first-cla.s.s athlete, and has made a record up at the academy. But he was a peddler, you know--an Irish peddler; came here three or four years ago with a pack on his back."

"And Ruth danced with him!" Mrs. Nelson's words were punctuated with horror.

Ruth looked up with blazing eyes. "Yes, I danced with him; why shouldn't I? You made me dance with Mr. Warrenton, last summer, when I told you he was drinking."

"But, my dear child, you forget who Mr. Warrenton is. And you actually danced with a peddler!" Her voice grew faint. "My dear, this must never occur again. You are young and easily imposed upon. I will accompany you everywhere in the future. Of course you need never recognize him hereafter. The impertinence of his addressing you!"

A step sounded on the gravel outside. Ruth ran to the window and spoke to some one below. "I'll be there as soon as I change my habit," she called.

"Who is it?" asked her aunt, hastily arranging her disturbed locks.

Ruth paused at the door. There was a slight tremor about her lips, but her eyes flashed their first open declaration of independence.

"It's Mr. Kilday," she said; "we are going out on the river."

There was an oppressive silence of ten minutes after she left, during which Carter smiled behind his paper and Mrs. Nelson gazed indignantly at the tea-pot. Then she tapped the bell.

"Rachel," she said impressively, "go to Miss Ruth's room and get her veil and gloves and sun-shade. Have Thomas take them to the boat-house at once."

CHAPTER XVII

UNDER THE WILLOWS

Between willow-fringed banks of softest green, and under the bluest of summer skies, the little river took its lazy Southern way. Tall blue lobelias and golden flags played hide-and-seek in the reflections of the gentle stream, and an occasional spray of goldenrod, advance-guard of the autumn, stood apart, a silent warning to the summer idlers.

Somewhere overhead a vireo, dainty poet of bird-land, proclaimed his love to the wide world; while below, another child of nature, no less impa.s.sioned, no less aching to give vent to the joy that was bursting his being, sat silent in a canoe that swung softly with the pulsing of the stream.

For Sandy had followed the highroad that led straight into the Land of Enchantment. No more wanderings by intricate byways up golden hills to golden castles; the Love Road had led him at last to the real world of the King Arthur days--the world that was lighted by a strange and wondrous light of romance, wherein he dwelt, a knight, waiting and longing to prove his valor in the eyes of his lady fair.

Burning deeds of prowess rioted in his brain. Oh for dungeons and towers and forbidding battlements! Any danger was welcome from which he might rescue her. Fire, flood, or bandits--he would brave them all.

Meanwhile he sat in the prow of the boat, his hands clasped about his knees, utterly powerless to break the spell of awkward silence that seemed to possess him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Burning deeds of prowess rioted in his brain"]

They had paddled in under the willows to avoid the heat of the sun, and had tied their boat to an overhanging bough.

Ruth, with her sleeve turned back to the elbow, was trailing her hand in the cool water and watching the little circles that followed her fingers. Her hat was off, and her hair, where the sun fell on it through the leaves, was almost the color of her eyes.

But what was the real color of her eyes? Sandy brought all his intellect to bear upon the momentous question. Sometimes, he thought, they were as dark as the velvet shadows in the heart of the stream; sometimes they were lighted by tiny flames of gold that sparkled in the brown depths as the sunshine sparkled in the shadows. They were deep as his love and bright as his hope.

Suddenly he realized that she had asked him a question.

"It's never a word I've heard of what ye are saying!" he exclaimed contritely. "My mind was on your eyes, and the brown of them. Do they keep changing color like that all the time?"

Ruth, thus earnestly appealed to, blushed furiously.

"I was talking about the river," she said quickly. "It's jolly under here, isn't it? So cool and green! I was awfully cross when I came."

"You cross?"

She nodded her head. "And ungrateful, and perverse, and queer, and totally unlike my father's family." She counted off her shortcomings on her fingers, and raised her brows in comical imitation of her aunt.

"A left-hand blessing on the one that said so!" cried Sandy, with such ardor that she fled to another subject.

"I saw Martha Meech yesterday. She was talking about you. She was very weak, and could speak only in a whisper, but she seemed happy."

"It's like her soul was in Heaven already," said Sandy.

"I took her a little picture," went on Ruth; "she loves them so. It was a copy of one of Turner's."

"Turner?" repeated Sandy. "Joseph Mallord William Turner, born in London, 1775. Member of the Royal Academy. Died in 1851."

She looked so amazed at this burst of information that he laughed.

"It's out of the catalogue. I learned what it said about the ones I liked best years ago."

"Where?"

"At the Olympian Exposition."

"I was there," said Ruth; "it was the summer we came home from Europe.

Perhaps that was where I saw you. I know I saw you somewhere before you came here."

"Perhaps," said Sandy, skipping a bit of bark across the water.

A band of yellow b.u.t.terflies on wide wings circled about them, and one, mistaking Ruth's rosy wet fingers for a flower, settled there for a long rest.

"Look!" she whispered; "see how long it stays!"

"It's not meself would be blaming it for forgetting to go away," said Sandy.

They both laughed, then Ruth leaned over the boat's side and pretended to be absorbed in her reflection in the water. Sandy had not learned that unveiled glances are improper, and if his lips refrained from echoing the vireo's song, his eyes were less discreet.

"You've got a dimple in your elbow!" he cried, with the air of one discovering a continent.

"I haven't," declared she, but the dimple turned State's evidence.

The sun had gone under a cloud as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, and a light tenderer than sunlight and warmer than moonlight fell across the river. The water slipped over the stones behind them with a pleasant swish and swirl, and the mint that was crushed by the prow of their boat gave forth an aromatic perfume.

Ever afterward the first faint odor of mint made Sandy close his eyes in a quick desire to retain the memory it recalled, to bring back the dawn of love, the first faint flush of consciousness in the girlish cheeks and the soft red lips, and the quick, uncertain breath as her heart tried not to catch beat with his own.

"Can't you sing something?" she asked presently. "Annette Fenton says you know all sorts of quaint old songs."

"They're just the bits I remember of what me mother used to sing me in the old country."