Page:Son of the wind.djvu/74

RV 62 Mrs. Rader looked relieved. "It must have been a hawk," she observed. "Bluejays don't come up this far."

A door somewhere outside shut vigorously. Rader did not change his attitude, but it was evident he had suspended reading. "There she is," he said.

"I wonder if she caught it," Mrs. Rader threw out. But to the scholar the interesting point evidently was not what the one approaching had caught, but that she would presently appear.

Carron wondered would it be "Blanche" or would it be "The Lady of the Lake?" Apparently it was a third person, neither child nor enchantress.

A longish oval face she had, long thick throat and sloping shoulders. She gave an impression of length of line without being tall, of brownness without being brown, of being but a slim reed and yet being fully a woman, of smiling and not smiling. A khaki skirt swung from her slender hips. Low shoes—spurs stuck on the heels—gave glimpses of slender ankles. Hat she had not; and her brown hair, bloused out in small wavy locks around the ears, was put up recklessly with indications of the ends of curls. A mongrel terrier with bright eyesslouched at her heels. In the first look she gave Carron an elf seemed to peep out of her eyes. Amusement, curiosity, some small elation too in-