Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/79

 as hair or apron-strings. Then the girls dutifully appeared, not with the same ingenuous self-possession as their mother, yet with assurance enough to carry them along.

"Meet my daughter Mary, Dr. Hall," said Mrs. Charles, in the very best mode of railroad presentation. "Meet my daughter Annie, Dr. Hall."

Dr. Hall declared himself charmed, which was not strictly in accord with the railroad formula. Annie and Mary looked as if it plagued them a little to hear him say so, twisting and blushing and putting their hands behind them like backward little things who never had met a man.

But Mary and Annie were neither backward nor small. They knew just about when and how to put a fresh railroader in his proper place in relation to themselves, even to the extent of a bat on the ear. It had been done. They were rosy, big-mouthed, comely girls, after the style of those who eat much, work hard and do not hold their attractiveness long.

Mary's hair was dark-red, her skin clear of a blemish, white and fine-grained as if she had been nurtured in shady gardens behind inaccessible walls, instead of the corned-beef and cabbage steam of a boarding-train. There was a provoking, mocking humor in her wide mouth; her eyes were brown. Annie was a fluffy-haired blonde, a bit snub-nosed and sniffing of features, but she had a rolling blue eye that stole glances cornerwise at the new doctor, and a ready giggle that came over her suddenly, making her throw her hand to her mouth as if to catch her teeth.

Dr. Hall was not expressing a conventional common-