Page:Hearts courageous (IA heartscourageous00rive).pdf/21

Rh through either wide window upon the warm, scent-steeped glimpses of the way. All along were waving reaches of wheat, where the poppy flung its wrinkled splash of red, or acres of young growing tobacco, wherein sweating slaves toiled listlessly, their songs woven with the undertone of the sluggish stream, slashed by reviling oaths and whip-crackings of a bearish overseer. At the dusty edges of the road thistle and wild honeysuckle scrambled for their breath, and cowslips went spinning yellow ribbons. It was a slumberous land, swathed in a tremulous haze of heat and a wash of sun.

“Anne,” said the matron at length, withdrawing her gaze from the window.

“Yes, aunt Mildred.”

“Do you intend to treat that boy badly?”

The girl was silent, gazing across the fields, watching the birds’ slender flashings in the olive hollows.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Do you intend to treat that boy badly?”

“What boy?” inquired Anne with a sweetness that boded other things.

“Francis Byrd.”

“I intend to treat him as I always have. No better, no worse.”