Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/127

116 always darted back to them to lie there and look out. Floyd's imagination was touched even by watching her, even by noticing the little details of her dress, the red ribbon against her clear brown throat, the peeping tip of her slipper. At luncheon new sides of her character appeared to him; though he knew instinctively how high her spirit was, he caught, too, a vague perception of her docility, of her innocent, simple humble-mindedness; she sat—and again Floyd's imagination was stirred—through her father's stories with the spirit of laughter lying comfortably in his gateway, issuing spontaneously now to glorify a stupid joke, now to cover the retreat of a crippled one. This last service Floyd felt the more acutely when he bungled in telling something that he had hoped to make amusing.

"Oh, Floyd, have you heard about Stewart?" she cried to him. "You have n't, I'm sure, for my letter came only yesterday. He's got into the Beaux Arts right off; is n't he the cleverest thing!"

"But I thought it took years and years!" exclaimed Floyd.

"Oh, it does often; indeed Stewart never expected to get in the first year anyway. But he did,—one of the first ten. Of course he calls it luck—but I knew he was patting himself on the back a good-deal, so I wrote to him not to get too vain. But just between ourselves—now that he can't hear—is n't he the cleverest thing?"

"I always thought so," said Floyd.

"And I'm sure you'll be glad of this; he really does think now he'll come here to live—imagine, a Bostonian leaving Boston and coming to Avalon!" "The inducement would bring the most conservative Bostonian," Floyd declared gallantly.

"Oh," she laughed, "I'm not the inducement; he's quite too lordly for that. No, indeed; I'm afraid he's found out how meek I really am. But he has an idea that all the people out here live in wigwams and log cabins, and