The Miller of Old Church | Page 8

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'!" sang Tobias in a passionate refrain.
"Now that's just it," said Gay, feeling as though he should like to throttle the procession of piccaninnies. "What I can't understand is why the people about here--those I met at Bottom's Ordinary, for instance, seem to have disliked me even before I came."
Without surprise or embarrassment, she changed the basket from her right to her left arm, and this simple movement had the effect of placing him at a distance, though apparently by accident.
"That's because of the old gentleman, I reckon," she answered, "my folks all hated him, I don't know why."
"But can you guess? You see I really want to understand. I've been away since I was eight years old