nx?"

"Oh, come, General! You aren't old--you're lazy."

By this time George and I had edged nearer the porch, and even before he
breathed her name in a whisper, I knew in the instant that her sparkling
glance ran over me, that she was my little girl of the red shoes just
budding into womanhood. She was standing in a square patch of sunlight,
midway between the steps and a bed of red geraniums near the gate, and
her dress of some thin white material was blown closely against the
curves of her bosom and her rounded hips. Over her broad white forehead,
with its heavily arched black eyebrows, the mass of her pale brown hair
spread in the strong breeze and stood out like the wings of a bird in
flight, and this gave her whole, finely poised figure a swift and
expectant look, as of one who is swept forward by some radiant impulse.
Her face, too, had this same ardent expression; I saw it in her eyes,
which fixed me the next moment with her starry and friendly gaze; in her
very full red lips that broke the pure outline of her features; and in
her strong, square chin held always a little upward with a proud and
impatient carriage. So vivid was my first glimpse of her, that for a
single instant I wondered if the radiance in her figure was not produced
by some fleeting accident of light and shadow. When I knew her better I
learned that this quality of brightness belonged neither to the mind nor
to an edge of light, but to the face itself--to some peculiar mingling
of clear grey with intense darkness in her brow and eyes.

As she stood there chatting gayly with the General, young George eyed
her from the darkened hall with a glance in which I read, when I turned
to him, a touch of his uncle's playful masculine superiority.

"She'll be a stunner, if she doesn't get too big," he observed. "I don't
like big girls--do you?"

Then as I made no rejoinder, he added after a moment, "Do you think her
mouth spoils her? Aunt Hatty calls her mouth coarse."

"Coarse?" I echoed angrily. "What does she mean by coarse?"

"Oh, too red and too full. She says a lady's mouth ought to be a
delicate bow."

"I never saw a delicate bow--"

"No more did I--but I'd call Sally a regular stunner now, mouth and all.
Sally!" he broke out suddenly, and stepped out on the porch. "I'll go
riding with you some day," he said, "if you want me."

She laughed up at him. "But I don't want you."

"You wanted me bad enough a year ago."

"That was a year ago.