The Miller of Old Church | Page 8

and soft ashen hair
parted smoothly over her ears and coiled in a large, loose knot at the
back of her head. As he reached her she smiled faintly and a little
brown mole at the corner of her mouth played charmingly up and down.
After the first minute, Gay found himself fascinated by this single
imperfection in her otherwise flawless features. More than her beauty
he felt that it stirred his blood and aroused in him the physical
tenderness which he associated always with some vague chivalrous
impulse.
She moved slightly when he dismounted beside her, and a number of
small splotches of black circling around her resolved themselves into a
bodyguard of little negroes, clad in checked pinafores, with the scant
locks wrapped tightly with crimson cotton.
"May I let down the bars for you?" he asked, turning to look into her
face with a smile, "and do you take your collection of piccaninnies
along for protection or for amusement?"
"Grandma doesn't like me to go out alone, sir--so many dreadful things
happen," she answered gently, with an utter absence of humour. "I can't
take anybody who is at work, so I let the little darkies come. Mary Jo is
the oldest and she's only six."
"Is your home near here?"
"I live at the mill. It's a mile farther on, but there is a short cut."
"Then you are related to the miller, Mr. Revercomb--that fine looking

chap I met at the ordinary?"
"He is my uncle. I am Blossom Revercomb," she answered.
"Blossom? It's a pretty name."
Her gaze dwelt on him calmly for and instant, with the faintest quiver
of her full white lids, which appeared to weigh heavily on her rather
prominent eyes of a pale periwinkle blue.
"My real name is Keren-happuch," she said at last, after a struggle with
herself, "grandma bein' a great Scripture reader, chose it when I was
born--but they call me Blossom, for short."
"And am I permitted, Miss Keren-happuch, to call you Blossom?"
Again she hesitated, pondering gravely.
"Mary Jo, if you unwrap your hair your mother will whip you," she said
suddenly, and went on without a perceptible change of tone,
"Keren-happuch is an ugly name, and I don't like it--though grandma
says we oughtn't to think any of the Bible names ugly, not even Gog.
She is quite an authority on Scripture, is grandma, and she can repeat
the first chapter in Chronicles backward, which the minister couldn't do
when he tried."
"I'd like to hear the name that would sound ugly on your lips, Miss
Keren-happuch."
If the sons of farmers had sought to enchant her ears with similar
strains, there was no hint of it in the smiling eyes she lifted to his. The
serenity of her look added, he thought, to her resemblance to some
pagan goddess--not to Artemis nor to Aphrodite, but to some creature
compounded equally of earth and sky. Io perhaps, or Europa? By Jove
he had it at last--the Europa of Veronese!
"There'll have to be a big frost before the persimmons get sweet," she
observed in a voice that was remarkably deep and full for a woman.

With the faint light on her classic head and her milky skin, he found a
delicious piquancy in the remark. Had she gossiped, had she even
laughed, the effect would have been disastrous. Europa, he was vaguely
aware, would hardly have condescended to coquetry. Her speech, like
her glance, would be brief, simple, direct.
"Tell me about the people here," he asked after a pause, in which he
plucked idly at the red-topped orchard grass through which they were
passing. Behind them the six little negroes walked primly in single file,
Mary Jo in the lead and a chocolate-coloured atom of two toddling at
the tail of the procession. From time to time shrill squeaks went up
from the rear when a startled partridge whirred over the pasture or a
bare brown foot came down on a toad or a grasshopper.
As she made no reply, he added in a more intimate tone, "I am Jonathan
Gay, of Jordan's Journey, as I suppose you know."
"The old gentleman's nephew?" she said, while she drew slightly away
from him. "Mary Jo, did you tell Tobias's mammy that he was coming
along?"
"Nawm, I ain done tole nobody caze dar ain nobody done ax me."
"But I said that you were not to bring him without letting Mahaly know.
You remember what a whipping she gave him the last time he came!"
At this a dismal howl burst from Tobias. "I
ain't-a-gwine-ter-git-a-whuppin'!"
"Lawd, Miss Blossom, hit cyarn' hut Tobias ez hit ud hut de res'er us,"
replied Mary Jo, with fine philosophy, "case dar ain but two years er
'im ter whup."
"I ain't-a-gwine-ter-git-a-whuppin'!"