The hardest thing she had to do was to mount the porch. For the steps had rotted away and Pen's father had put down a little box and a big box to climb up on "until he got around to fixing the steps." The boxes had been there for two years now. Somebody had gone through the top of the little box and an old piece of board had been laid across it.
The young man was a tall fellow; bright-haired, ruddy and smiling, with beautiful white teeth. He was wearing white flannel trousers of fine quality rather soiled and a snowy shirt cut off at the elbows and open to reveal a smooth brown throat. Pen was taken by surprise. Something about him, the strong bare neck like a column, the laughing eyes that had yet a sort of hunger in them too, turned her suddenly giddy. She was furious at her own weakness--and at him for being the cause of it. If in that moment he had said: "Come!" and had walked off with a curt jerk of the head, she would have had to follow. It was the secret consciousness of this that appalled her.
Fortunately for her he was civilized. He merely smiled as a gentleman may in frank admiration--but not too frank. He was clearly what Pen called a gentleman. The thought was balm to her soul. For if he had not been she knew it would have been just the same with her. The first gentleman she had seen in so many months! It was comforting to be assured that they still walked the earth.
As in a dream she heard her father saying: "Mr. Donald Counsell ... my daughter. Her name is Pendleton Broome the same as my own. It is a family custom."
She heard the young man apologizing for his appearance. "I never expected to..."
Pen caught him up sharply. "Find white people here? You wouldn't. From the look of the place."
Both men were disconcerted by her brusqueness. Pen was horribly ashamed of herself. "I will not blush! ... I will not blush!" she said to herself, glaring out across the river. After the first glance she never looked at the young man again, but was nevertheless tinglingly conscious of his aspect; the fine lines of his body, his fair tanned skin, and always of those merry, speaking, wistful eyes. "What has happened to me? ... What has happened to me?" a little voice within her seemed to be wailing.