Young Si
by
Mr. Bentley had just driven into the yard with the new summer boarder. Mrs. Bentley and Agnes were peeping at her from behind the parlour curtains with the keen interest that they–shut in by their restricted farm life–always felt in any visitor from the outside world lying beyond their boundary of purple misted hills.
Mrs. Bentley was a plump, rosy-cheeked woman with a motherly smile. Agnes was a fair, slim schoolgirl, as tall as her mother, with a sweet face and a promise of peach blossom prettiness in the years to come. The arrival of a summer boarder was a great event in her quiet life.
“Ain’t she pretty?” whispered Mrs. Bentley admiringly, as the girl came slowly up the green slope before the house. “I do hope she’s nice. You can generally calculate on men boarders, but girls are doubtful. Preserve me from a cranky boarder! I’ve had enough of them. I kinder like her looks, though.”
Ethel Lennox had paused at the front door as Mrs. Bentley and Agnes came into the hall. Agnes gazed at the stranger with shy, unenvious admiration; the latter stood on the stone step just where the big chestnut by the door cast flickering gleams and shadows over her dress and shining hair.
She was tall, and gowned in some simple white material that fell about her in graceful folds. She wore a cluster of pale pink roses at her belt, and a big, picturesque white hat shaded her face and the glossy, clinging masses of her red hair–hair that was neither auburn nor chestnut but simply red. Nor would anyone have wished it otherwise, having once seen that glorious mass, with all its wonderful possibilities of rippling luxuriance.
Her complexion was of that perfect, waxen whiteness that goes with burnished red hair and the darkest of dilated violet eyes. Her delicately chiselled features wore what might have been a somewhat too decided impress of spirit and independence, had it not been for the sweet mouth, red and dimpled and curving, that parted in a slow, charming smile as Mrs. Bentley came forward with her kindly welcome.
“You must be real tired, Miss Lennox. It’s a long drive from the train down here. Agnes, show Miss Lennox up to her room, and tea will be ready when you come down.”
Agnes came forward with the shy grace that always won friends for her, and the two girls went slowly up the broad, old-fashioned staircase, while Mrs. Bentley bustled away to bring in the tea and put a goblet of damask roses on the table.
“She looks like a picture, doesn’t she, John?” she said to her husband. “I never saw such a face–and that hair too. Would you have believed red hair could be so handsome? She seems real friendly–none of your stuck-up fine ladies! I’ve had all I want of them, I can tell you!”
“Sh–sh–sh!” said Mr. Bentley warningly, as Ethel Lennox came in with her arm about Agnes.
She looked even more lovely without her hat, with the soft red tendrils of hair lying on her forehead. Mrs. Bentley sent a telegraphic message of admiration across the table to her husband, who was helping the cold tongue and feeling his way to a conversation.
“You’ll find it pretty quiet here, Miss Lennox. We’re plain folks and there ain’t much going and coming. Maybe you don’t mind that, though?”
“I like it. When one has been teaching school all the year in a noisy city, quiet seems the one thing to be desired. Besides, I like to fancy myself something of an artist. I paint and sketch a little when I have time, and Miss Courtland, who was here last summer, said I could not find a more suitable spot. So I came because I knew that mackerel fishing was carried on along the shore, and I would have a chance to study character among the fishermen.”