Judith came forward and greeted the newcomer, all unaware of the picture she made, tall and straight and pliant in her simple blue cotton, under the wonderful blue-and-white sky and the passionate purple pink of the blossoms, with the scant folds of her frock outlining the rounded young body, its sleeves rolled up on her fine arms, its neck folded away from the firm column of her throat, the frolic wind ruffling the dark locks above her shadowy eyes. There were strange gleams in those dark eyes; her red lips were tremulous whether she spoke or not. It was as though she had some urgent message for him which waited always behind her silence or her speech. "I thought I'd come over and get acquainted with my neighbours," Bonbright began in his impersonal fashion. "Uncle Jep and the boys has gone across to the far place ploughing to-day," said Judith. "They's nobody at home but Jim Cal and his wife--and me." She forebore to add the name of Huldah Spiller, though her angry eye descried that young woman ostentatiously hanging wash on a line back of the Jim Cal cabin. "I won't stop then this morning," said Bonbright. "I'll get along over to the far place. I wanted to have speech with your uncle. He was at Aunt Nancy's the other day and we had some talk; he knows more about what I'm aiming at up here then I do. A man of his age and good sense can be a sight of help to me." "Uncle Jep will be proud to do anything he can," said Judith softly. "Won't you come in and set awhile?" She dreaded that the invitation might hurry him away, and now made hasty use of the first diversion that offered. He had broken a blooming switch from the peach-tree beneath which he stood, and she reproached him fondly. "Look at you. Now there won't never be no peaches where them blossoms was." He twisted the twig in his fingers and smiled down at her, conscious of a singular and personal kindness between them, aware too, for the first time, that she was young, beautiful, and a woman; before, she had been merely an individual to him. "My mother used to say that to me when I would break fruit blows," he said meditatively. "But father always pruned his trees when they were in blossom--they can't any of them bear a peach for every bloom." She shook her head as though giving up the argument, since it was after all a matter of sentiment. Her dark, rich-coloured beauty glowed its contrast to his cool, northern type. At present neither spoke more than a few syllables of the spiritual language of the other, yet so powerful was the attraction between them that even Creed began to feel it, while Judith, the primitive woman, all given over to instinct, promptly laid about her for something to hold and interest him. "The young folks is a-goin' to get up a play-party at our house sometime soon," she hazarded. "I reckon you wouldn't come to any such as that, would you?"