Fran | Page 6

small type; or Fran who's unlike everybody else; or--Oh, there are lots of meanings to me. Some find one, some another, some never understand."
It was because Abbott Ashton was touched, that he spoke lightly:
"What a very young Nonpareil to be wandering about the world, all by yourself!"
She was grateful for his raillery. "How young do you think?"
"Let me see. _Hum!_ You are only--about--" She laughed mirthfully at his air of preposterous wisdom. "About thirteen--fourteen, yes, you are more than fi-i-ifteen, more than...But take off that enormous hat, little Nonpareil. There's no use guessing in the dark when the moon's shining."
Fran was gleeful. "All right," she cried in one of her childish tones, shrill, fresh, vibratory with the music of innocence.
By this time they had reached the foot-bridge that spanned the deep ravine. Here the wagon-road made its crossing of a tiny stream, by slipping under the foot-bridge, some fifteen feet below. Down there, all was semi-gloom, pungent fragrance of weeds, cooling breath of the half-dried brook, mystery of space between steep banks. But on a level with the bridge, meadow-lands sloped away from the ravine on either hand. On the left lay straggling Littleburg with its four or five hundred houses, faintly twinkling, and beyond the meadows on the right, a fringe of woods started up as if it did not belong there, but had come to be seen, while above the woods swung, the big moon with Fran on the foot-bridge to shine for.
Fran's hat dangled idly in her hand as she drew herself with backward movement upon the railing. The moonlight was full upon her face; so was the young man's gaze. One of her feet found, after leisurely exploration, a down-slanting board upon the edge of which she pressed her heel for support. The other foot swayed to and fro above the flooring, while a little hand on either side of her gripped the top rail.
"Here I am," she said, shaking back rebellious hair.
Abbott Ashton studied her with grave deliberation--it is doubtful if he had ever before so thoroughly enjoyed his duties as usher. He pronounced judicially, "You are older than you look."
"Yes," Fran explained, "my experience accounts for that. I've had lots."
Abbott's lingering here beneath the moon when he should have been hurrying back to the tent, showed how unequally the good things of life--experience, for instance--are divided. "You are sixteen," he hazarded, conscious of a strange exhilaration.
Fran dodged the issue behind a smile--"And I don't think you are so awfully old."
Abbott was brought to himself with a jolt that threw him hard upon self-consciousness. "I am superintendent of the public school." The very sound of the words rang as a warning, and he became preternaturally solemn.
"Goodness!" cried Fran, considering his grave mouth and thoughtful eyes, "does it hurt that bad?"
Abbott smiled. All the same, the position of superintendent must not be bartered away for the transitory pleasures of a foot-bridge. "We had better hurry, if you please," he said gravely.
"I am so afraid of you," murmured Fran. "But I know the meeting will last a long time yet. I'd hate to have to wait long at Mr. Gregory's with that disagreeable lady who isn't Mrs. Gregory."
Abbott was startled. Why did she thus designate Mr. Gregory's secretary? He looked keenly at Fran, but she only said plaintively:
"Can't we stay here?"
He was disturbed and perplexed. It was as if a flitting shadow from some unformed cloud of thought-mist had fallen upon the every-day world out of his subconsciousness. Why did this stranger speak of Miss Grace Noir as the "lady who isn't Mrs. Gregory"? The young man at times had caught himself thinking of her in just that way.
Looking intently at the other as if to divine her secret thoughts, he forgot momentarily his uneasiness. One could not long be troubled by thought-mists from subconsciousness, when looking at Fran, for Fran was a fact. He sighed involuntarily. She was such a fact!
Perhaps she wasn't really pretty--but homely? by no means. Her thin face slanted to a sharpened chin. Her hair, drawn to the corner of either eye, left a white triangle whose apex pointed to the highest reach of the forehead. Thus the face, in all its contour, was rising, or falling, to a point. This sharpness of feature was in her verylaugh itself; while in that hair-encircled oval was the light of elfish mockery, but of no human joy.
School superintendents do not enjoy being mystified. "Really," Abbott declared abruptly, "I must go back to the meeting."
Fran had heard enough about his leaving her. She decided to stop that once and for all. "If you go back, I go, too!" she said conclusively. She gave him a look to show that she meant it, then became all humility.
"Please don't be cross with little Nonpareil," she coaxed. "Please