Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/129

 waked up suddenly; for Max gave a sudden jump, and behold, August was close to them.

Thekla was wrong, after all; and Max right. For there stood a handsome young man, with quick, fiery eyes and a bronzed face, round which floated locks of auburn hair. He seemed very hot, and was wiping the drops from his forehead; but, for all his good looks, there was something about him from which the children rather shrank.

Yet he did not appear a bad fellow either; for he made himself at home on the door-step, and borrowed the palm-leaf as if he had been one of the family. Any thing so curious or beautiful as his dress the children had never before seen. It was a loosely fitting garment of vivid green, thickly wrought all over with a pattern in which ferns and vines and dense, bright leaves were interlaced and twisted in the most wonderful manner. A chain of fire-flies swung about his neck like a collar, his hat was looped up at the side with a glow-worm of immense size, which,