, fifty or thereabouts, very pale,
especially to one accustomed to the tanned skins of the farm and the
country town. His face held so frank a kindliness, especially the eyes
which looked tired and a little sad, that David felt its expression
like a friendly greeting or a strong handclasp.

The lady did not have this, perhaps because she was a great deal
younger. She was yet in the bud, far from the tempering touch of
experience, still in the state of looking forward and anticipating
things. She was dark, of medium height, and inclined to be plump.
Many delightful curves went to her making, and her waist tapered
elegantly, as was the fashion of the time. Thinking it over
afterwards, the young man decided that she did not belong in the
picture with a prairie schooner and camp kettles, because she looked so
like an illustration in a book of beauty. And David knew something of
these matters, for had he not been twice to St. Louis and there seen
the glories of the earth and the kingdoms thereof?

But life in camp outside Independence had evidently blunted his
perceptions. The small waist, a round, bare throat rising from a
narrow band of lace, and a flat, yellow straw hat were the young
woman's only points of resemblance to the beauty-book heroines. She
was not in the least beautiful, only fresh and healthy, the flat straw
hat shading a girlish face, smooth and firmly modeled as a ripe fruit.
Her skin was a glossy brown, softened with a peach's bloom, warming
through deepening shades of rose to lips that were so deeply colored no
one noticed how firmly they could come together, how their curving,
crimson edges could shut tight, straighten out, and become a line of
forceful suggestions, of doggedness, maybe--who knows?--perhaps of
obstinacy. It was her physical exuberance, her downy glow, that made
David think her good looking; her serene, brunette richness, with its
high lights of coral and scarlet, that made her radiate an aura of
warmth, startling in that woodland clearing, as the luster of a firefly
in a garden's glooming dusk.

She stopped speaking as he emerged from the trees, and Leff's
stammering answer held her in a riveted stare of attention. Then she
looked up and saw David.

"Oh," she said, and transferred the stare to him. "Is this he?"

Leff was obviously relieved:

"Oh, David, I ain't known what to say to this lady and her father.
They think some of joining us. They've been waiting for quite