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.
[Illustration: "'Those squirrels are very tame,' she observed calmly."]
"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.
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