“That’s a clever-looking little nag,” said Roden. “Is she yours?”
“Nuck,” said Virginia. “I reckon she’s yours; she goes with the place.”
“I didn’t see her this morning,” Roden said, somewhat puzzled.
“No; she’d gone to the shop to get a new shoe; that’s why. I reckon you’ll name her over.”
“Why?” said Roden. It seemed to him he had never put that monosyllabic question so often before in the entire course of his life.
“’Cause it ain’t very pretty,” Virginia explained. “Father named her--it’s Pokeberry.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Roden, laughing. “I rather fancy it. It’s uncommon, to say the least. I don’t think I’ll change it.”
“Well, there’s two others I _know_ you’ll change,” she asserted. “They’re two carriage-horses, an’ they’re named Peckerwood an’ Hoppergrass.”
“Capital!” said Roden, laughing again. “Change them?--not much! Shall we start now?”
It was a perfect day--perfect as only a day in Southern winter-tide can be. The air was radiant, wine-like, while with a still further suggestiveness little glittering insects spun around and around in the sunlight like the particles of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic. The roads, dried in some sort by the steady wind of the past night and morning, were mellowed to a dull orange in lieu of their former startling crimson. Infinite tones of faded browns and grays wrapped wold and hill-side. The sky, of an intense metallic pallor, was covered with gauze-like masses of wind-torn cirri. As they went on, a sycamore thrust its bone-white arms before a dark hollow in the mountain-side, reminding one of a skeleton guarding the mouth of a cavern, where during its life it had concealed some treasure. The harsh call of crows, beginning in the far east, passed in _crescendo_ above their heads, and died away as the heavy birds flew westward.
Virginia, apparently unconscious of his presence, was watching Roden narrowly as he walked at her side. Owing to that peculiar faculty with which only women are endowed, she was enabled thus to observe him while seemingly absorbed in the sun-shot vista of the road before them. He had taken off his coat, as the increasing sunlight and the exertion of walking had overheated him, and his flannel shirt expressed damply the splendid modelling of his supple body. She noticed how the sunburn stopped in a line about his throat, the fair flesh showing beneath with a girlish whiteness, as is often the case with very strong men.