Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/415

 fastidious. I wouldn't care how near the cows were—if they were nice cows!"

She thought for an instant he might be laughing at her, and peered keenly into his face, a more openly observing look than she had as yet given him. What she saw evidently reassured her, for she went on with a lighter tone, "Truly it has its own sort of architectural beauty. It doesn't have a bit of the packing-box, brought-in-and-dumped-down look that most dwelling-houses have, no matter how they're planned. It seems to have grown that way. The long, low old farm-house, weathered so beautifully, it looks like an outcrop of the very earth itself, like a ridge or rock or a fold in a field."

It was about at this time that Neale began to lose the capacity of listening to what she was saying. With the best will in the world he could not keep his mind on it. He found that he felt a giddy, dazzled uncertainty of where he was putting his feet and tried to pull himself together. He must really notice a little more what he was about. Her quick, rising and falling, articulate speech, her quick, flashing changes of expression, the play of her flexible hands and shoulders—no, how could he listen to what she was saying?

But she was asking him a question now. She was saying, "You're not really going to sell all that, to just anybody!"

"But really," he answered, helplessly honest, "it sounds wonderful as you tell it, but what could I do with it? I couldn't very well go to live in Ashley, Vermont, could I?"

"Why not?" she asked. "A good many people have."

"Well! But …" he began, incapable of forming any answer, incapable of thinking of anything but the dark softness of her gaze on him. What was it they were talking about? Oh, yes, about selling out at Ashley. "Oh, but I have other plans. I am just about to go to China."

"China! Why to China?"

Neale lost his head entirely … "notice more what he was about?" He had not the least idea what he was about. He said to her rather wildly, "I hardly know myself why I am going to China. I'd like, if you will let me—I'd like ever so much to tell you—about it. And see what you think.