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DOROTHY came up to the front gate at a light gallop. Disdaining the assistance of the horse block, she nimbly sprang from the saddle to the ground and called to her mare “Stand, Chestnut!”
Then she gathered up the excessively long riding skirt which the Amazons of that time always wore on horseback, and walked up the pathway to the door, leaving the horse to await the coming of a stable boy. Arthur could not help observing and admiring the fact that she walked with marked dignity and grace even in a riding skirt—a thing so exceedingly difficult to do that not one woman in a score could accomplish it even with conscious effort. Yet this mere girl did it, manifestly without either effort or consciousness. As an accomplished anatomist Dr. Brent knew why. “That girl has grown up,” he said to himself, “in as perfect a freedom as those locust trees out there, enjoy. She is as straight as the straightest of them, and she has perfect use of all her muscles. I wonder who she is, and why she gives orders here at Wyanoke quite as if she belonged to the place, or the place belonged to her.”
This last thought was suggested by the fact that just before mounting the two steps that led to the porch, Dorothy had whistled through her fingers and said to the negro man who answered her call:—“Take the hounds to the kennels, and fasten them in. Turn the setters out.”
But the young man had little time for wondering. The girl came into the hall, and, as Aunt Polly had gone to order a little “snack,” she introduced herself.
“You are Dr. Brent, I think? Yes? well, I’m Dorothy South. Let me bid you welcome as the new master of Wyanoke.”
With that she shook hands in a fashion that was quite child-like, and tripped away up the stairs.
Arthur Brent found himself greatly interested in the girl. She was hardly a woman, and yet she was scarcely to be classed as a child. In her manner as well as in her appearance she seemed a sort of compromise between the two. She was certainly not pretty, yet Arthur’s quick scrutiny informed him that in a year or two she was going to be beautiful. It only needed a little further ripening of her womanhood to work that change. But as one cannot very well fall in love with a woman who is yet to be, Arthur Brent felt no suggestion of other sentiment than one of pleased admiration for the girl, mingled with respect for her queenly premature dignity. He observed, however, that her hair was nut brown and of luxuriant growth, her complexion, fair and clear in spite of a pronounced tan, and her eyes large, deep blue and finely overarched by their dark brows.
Before he had time to think further concerning her, Aunt Polly returned and asked him to “snack.”
“Dorothy will be down presently,” she said. “She’s quick at changing her costume.”
Arthur was about to ask, “Who is Dorothy? And how does she come to be here?” but at that moment the girl herself came in, white gowned and as fresh of face as a newly blown rose is at sunrise.
“It’s too bad, Aunt Polly,” she said, “that you had to order the snack. I ought to have got home in time to do my duty, and I would, only that Trump behaved badly—Trump is one of my dogs, Doctor—and led the others into mischief. He ran after a hare, and, of course, I had to stop and discipline him. That made me late.”
“You keep your dogs under good control Miss—by the way how am I to call you?”
“I don’t know just yet,” answered the girl with the frankness of a little child.
“How so?” asked Arthur, as he laid a dainty slice of cold ham on her plate.
“Why, don’t you see, I don’t know you yet. After we get acquainted I’ll tell you how to call me. I think I am going to like you, and if I do, you are to call me Dorothy. But of course I can’t tell yet. Maybe I shall not like you at all, and then—well, we’ll wait and see.”
“Very well,” answered the young master of the plantation, amused by the girl’s extraordinary candor and simplicity. “I’ll call you Miss South till you make up your mind about liking or detesting me.”
“Oh, no, not that,” the girl quickly answered. “That would be too grown up. But you might say ‘Miss Dorothy,’ please, till I make up my mind about you.”
“Very well, Miss Dorothy. Allow me to express a sincere hope that after you have come to know what sort of person I am, you’ll like me well enough to bid me drop the handle to your name.”
“But why should you care whether a girl like me likes you or not?”
“Why, because I am very strongly disposed to like a girl like you.”
“How can you feel that way, when you don’t know me the least little bit?”
“But I do know you a good deal more than ‘the least little bit,’ ” answered the young man smiling.
“How can that be? I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps not, and yet it is simple enough. You see I have been training my mind and my eyes and my ears and all the rest of me all my life, into habits of quick and accurate observation, and so I see more at a glance than I should otherwise see in an hour. For example, you’ll admit that I have had no good chance to become acquainted with your hounds, yet I know that one of them has lost a single joint from his tail, and another had a bur inside one of his ears this morning, which you have since removed.”
The girl laid down her fork in something like consternation.
“But I shan’t like you at all if you see things in that way. I’ll never dare come into your presence.”
“Oh, yes, you will. I do not observe for the purpose of criticising; especially I never criticise a woman or a girl to her detriment.”
“That is very gallant, at any rate,” answered the girl, accenting the word “gallant” strongly on the second syllable, as all Virginians of that time properly did, and as few other people ever do. “But tell me what you started to say, please?”
“What was it?”
“Why, you said you knew me a good deal. I thought you were going to tell me what you knew about me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you part of what I know. I know that you have a low pitched voice—a contralto it would be called in musical nomenclature. It has no jar in it—it is rich and full and sweet, and while you always speak softly, your voice is easily heard. I should say that you sing.”
“No. I must not sing.”
“Must not? How is that?”
The girl seemed embarrassed—almost pained. The young man, seeing this, apologized:
“Pardon me! I did not mean to ask a personal question.”
“Never mind!” said the girl. “You were not unkind. But I must not sing, and I must never learn a note of music, and worst of all I must not go to places where they play fine music. If I ever get to liking you very well indeed, perhaps I’ll tell you why—at least all the why of it that I know myself—for I know only a little about it. Now tell me what else you know about me. You see you
