Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/93

Rh, and it was an odd thing that as he listened, he said to himself,—

"If that is n't her voice, I 'm mistaken."

The voice said:— "Can I sit for a few moments in one of these chairs, till my friends return?"

The voice was so near that John walked away a few steps, before he turned to see who had spoken. He walked on and on for a rod or two, so sure was he that when he turned he should see the face of which he had been in search. He was not mistaken. There she sat,—the strange, vivid, yellow-haired, blue-eyed stranger,—alone in a chair on a raised platform; the platform was full of camp chairs of all sorts which had been brought there by an enterprising Middleburg tradesman, to sell to the camp-meeting pilgrims. The tradesman had gone away for the afternoon and left the business in the charge of his wife, a brisk, bustling, dapper little body with a voice like a jew's-harp, and eyes whose sharp shrewdness was saved from being disagreeable only by their kindly twinkle, and lines of good-natured wrinkles at their outer corners. She was holding forth to two friends volubly and loudly on the subject of her grievances in the matter of the chairs.

"Folks seems to think we 've brought 'em over here just for them to set in," said she. "I 've tried every way I could think of; we turned 'em bottom side up some days, but the chairs don't show so