Granny's jelly-like body really trembled with rage, and I began to have
fears for the outcome of the incident. Of course, it amounted to nothing
at all so far as right or wrong was concerned. It was simply a natural
expression of the primeval simplicity which marked all the Dryad's
movements. She was a child, and she had played a child's trick.
She now stood a few feet to one side, looking at me in unfeigned
amazement, apparently indifferent to the old woman's outburst. She was
dressed nicer than when I saw her before. Her garment was pale green,
with little wavy stripes of darker color. Her shoes, too, were a grade
better, but still clumsy, and she had a ribbon on her hair, which hung,
as before, down her shoulders. She seemed averse to wearing anything on
her head, for she held her bonnet--a poke bonnet, like the one I had
handed her in the glade--in her left hand.
As she looked fully and squarely at me with her peculiar Irish gray
eyes, I felt the same sensation come as when I had first beheld her. It
was a feeling I cannot adequately describe, because no definite word I
can think of would do. If the word existed, and if I knew it, I would
set it down. I should be just as glad to know what that feeling meant as
you. Perhaps each of us shall find out later.
She gazed at me and I gazed at her, and Granny gazed at us both. Our
eyes met for a full breath, and then somehow mine fell to her throat.
When a woman's throat is beautiful it is altogether as attractive as a
lovely face. The Dryad's throat was a poem. If John Keats could have
seen it, another golden ode would have come down along with the famous
seven. It was simply a perfect column of warm, white, vigorous young
life. Not too slender, and swelling on to the shoulders in the gentlest,
most marvelous contour. It was while I was engaged in fascinated
contemplation of her throat she spoke.
"Land sakes!... How'd yo' know my name?"
"The Sa--Jeff Angel told me."
"Oh!"
Her face underwent a rapid change, and the next moment she had leaped
lightly upon the porch, flung her arms around Granny's neck and snuggled
her head against the old woman's bosom.
"Don't you bother 'bout me, Granny!" she said, in soothing tones, and
again that indefinable haunting cadence smote my ears and caused me to
stir uneasily as I stood watching the scene. What a creature of moods
this girl was!
Now one hand patted Granny's fat cheek, and another smoothed the
lusterless gray hair. The expression which stole over the truculent face
made me think of the sunlight falling suddenly upon some forbidding
cliff, and that moment I knew how deep and wonderful must be the love
which beat in that old heart for Lessie.
"La! Now, chil'," said Granny, "have yo' way if yo' mus', but be
keerful--always be keerful. 'Specially o' men folks, 'cus they's so full
o' Sat'n 'n' mischief."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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