Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/21

 whom her father had said so much and whom she should have gone to see long ago. Would she be all stiff manners and critical eyes, she wondered, the kind of person to make you feel awkward and tongue-tied the moment you crossed the threshold? It was the feeling that she must be something of the sort that had kept Betsey from coming for all this time. For some distance the lane wound and twisted so that she could not catch any glimpse of the white cottage that she sought. Once she stopped where a side path, a mere rough track bordered by Lombardy poplars, led away to the left. Could that be the way, she wondered, but no, it must lead only to the fields beyond, for here was a heavy white farm horse, evidently just come from plowing, turning into the path through a gap in the hedge. The big creature lifted his feet slowly, seeming comfortably tired after a well-spent day among the furrows, as he trudged leisurely along under the slender shadows of the wet poplar trees. He bore an equally weary rider, a boy of about Elizabeth's own age, who was perched sideways on the broad back, his legs swinging with every lurch of the horse's shoulders, his hat held on his knee so that Elizabeth could see plainly his hot, sunburned face and his rumpled, red-brown hair. He did not observe her, for he was looking away across the valley toward that same group of towers that she herself had been watching, as though