As he told her of his trip up the valley and the effect it made upon him, and how he had never dreamed of anything so beautiful, and how good the Pollards were; and what he had painted and what he expected to paint; talking all the time with his thumb circling about as if it was a bit of charcoal and the air it swept through but a sheet of Whatman's best, her critical eye roamed over his figure and costume.
She had caught in her first swift, comprehensive glance from over the bridge-rail, the loose jacket and broad-brimmed planter's hat, around which, with his love of color, Oliver had twisted a spray of nasturtium blossoms and leaves culled from the garden-patch that morning; but now that he was closer, she saw the color in his cheeks and noticed, with a suppressed smile, the slight mustache curling at the ends, a new feature since the school had closed. She followed too the curves of the broad chest and the muscles outlined through his shirt. She had never thought him so strong and graceful, nor so handsome.
(The smile came to the surface now--an approving, admiring smile.) It was the mountain-climbing, no doubt, she said to herself, and the open-air life that had wrought the change.
With a laugh and toss of her head she unpacked her own basket and laid her contribution to the feast on the flat rock--the pie on a green dock-leaf, which she reached over and pulled from the water's edge, and the cake on the pink napkin--the only sign of city luxury in her outlay. Oliver's eye meanwhile wandered over her figure and costume--a costume he had never seen before on any living woman, certainly not any woman around Kennedy Square.
The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and the leather as tough. (Sue Clayton would have died with laughter had she seen those shoes.) Her blouse was of gray flannel, belted to the waist by a cotton saddle-girth--white and red --and as broad as her hand. The tam-o'-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently home-made, and not at all like McFudd's, which was as soft as the back of a kitten and without a seam.
Then his eyes sought her face. He noticed how brown she was--and how ruddy and healthy. How red the lips--red as mountain-berries, and back of them big white teeth--white as peeled almonds. He caught the line of the shoulders and the round of the full arm and tapering wrist, and the small, well-shaped hand. "Queer clothes," he said to himself --"but the girl inside is all right."
Sitting under the shadow of the old bridge on the main highway, each weighed and balanced the other, even as they talked aloud of the Academy School, and the pupils, and the dear old Professor whom they both loved. They discussed the prospect of its doors being opened the next winter. They talked of Mrs.
Mulligan, and the old Italian who sold peanuts, and whose head Margaret had painted; and of Jack Bedford and Fred Stone--the dearest fellow in the world--and last year's pictures--especially Church's "Niagara," the sensation of the year, and Whittredge's "Mountain Brook," and every other subject their two busy brains could rake and scrape up except --and this subject, strange to say, was the only one really engrossing their two minds--the overturning of Mr. Judson's body on the art-school floor, and the upsetting of Miss Grant's mind for days thereafter.
Once Oliver had unintentionally neared the danger-line by mentioning the lithographer's name, but Margaret had suddenly become interested in the movements of a chipmunk that had crept down for the crumbs of their luncheon, and with a woman's wit had raised her finger to her lips to command silence lest he should be frightened off.
They painted no more that afternoon. When the shadows began to fall in the valley they started up the road, picking up Oliver's easel and trap--both had stood unmolested and would have done so all summer with perfect safety--and Oliver walked with Margaret as far as the bars that led into Taft's pasture. There they bade each other good-night, Margaret promising to be ready in the morning with her big easel and a fresh canvas, which Oliver was to carry, when they would both go sketching together and make a long blessed summer day of it.
That night Oliver's upraised, restless hands felt the shingles over his head more than once before he could get to sleep. He had not thought he could be any happier--but he was. Margaret's unexpected appearance had restored to him that something which the old life at home had always yielded. He was never really happy without the companionship of a woman, and this he had not had since leaving Kennedy Square. Those he had met on rare occasions in New York were either too conventional or selfconscious, or they seemed to be offended at his familiar Southern ways. This one was so sensible and companionable, and so appreciative and sympathetic.
He felt he could say anything to her and she would know what he meant. Perhaps, too, by and by she would understand just why he had upset a man who had been rude to her.
Margaret lay awake, too--not long--not more than five minutes, perhaps. Long enough, however, to wish she was not so sunburnt, and that she had brought her other dress and a pair of gloves and a hat instead of this rough mountain-suit. Long enough, too, to recall Oliver's standing beside her on the bridge with his big hat sweeping the ground, the color mounting to his cheeks, and that joyous look in his eyes.
"Was he really glad to see me," she said to herself, as she dropped off into dreamland, "or is it his way with all the women he meets? I wonder, too, if he protects them all?"
And so ended a day that always rang out in Oliver's memory with a note of its own.
These dreams under the shingles! What would life be without them?
