With the light of the lamp came another revelation. While the girl's
cheap woollen dress and jacket, of a pattern sold in the country stores,
showed her to be the product of Marvin's home and the recipient of his
scanty bounty, her trim, well-rounded figure, soft, glossy hair--now
that her hat was off--and small hands and feet, classed her as one of
far gentler birth. There was, too, as she passed in and out of the room
helping her mother with the supper-table, a certain grace and dignity,
especially in the way in which she bent her head on one side to listen,
a gesture often seen in a drawing-room, but never, in my experience, in
a cabin. What astonished me most, however, were her hands--her
exquisitely modelled hands, still ruddy from the fresh night air, but so
wonderfully curved and dimpled. And then, too, the perfect graciousness
and simplicity of her manner and its absolute freedom from coquetry or
self-consciousness. Her mother was right--I would not soon forget her.
And yet, by what freak of Nature, I found myself continually repeating,
had this flower been made to bloom on this soil? Through what ancestor's
veins had this blood trickled, and through what channels had it reached
these humble occupants of a forest home?
But if her mother was the happier for her coming, Jim, radiant with joy,
seemed to walk on air.
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