While as to her eyes, what
in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness
in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other
than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman
who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively
handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing
at me.
"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up
my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out
arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be
done was to set our camp itself in order.
"Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way that the Infant does
when she wishes to lead the way to the discovery of the fairyland that
lies beyond the meadows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under
the sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, certain
prudences having been seen to, we were for the time without
responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh for the very freedom of it
and pull one another hither and thither like a couple of children.
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