ned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonel
saying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like the
Colonel, either. Nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voice
before. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him and
listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.

"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet
to-night."

"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing
moon. "I won't be afraid."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.

"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to
say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the
look of you."

The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to
the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also
the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away--the big
day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the
younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least
half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil
had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with
his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she
stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.

The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat
behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking
rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh,
and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly
with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in
the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this
humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not
have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not
of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white
apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed
deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown
hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of
white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to
a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a
level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that
was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were