"It's Johnny Ludlow, Cherry," said Juliet.
She was really very unsophisticated; or--very much the other way. One cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might, there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her hair.
Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of gold in which Jupiter went courting Danaë could hardly have been more seductive than this.
"I know you don't mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!" she exclaimed joyously. "I did so want to make your acquaintance. And Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It's not Tim's fault if he can't come back yet. Is it now?"
"I do not know anything about it," answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not quite sure what to make of her.
With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.
"Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?" asked the man civilly. "I am just starting back."
"No, thank you, Lease," I answered. "I am going across to Duck Brook."
"Curious young party that, ain't it, sir?" said Lease, pointing the whip over his shoulder towards the house. "She went and asked me if Mrs. Cramp warn't an old Image, born in the year One, and didn't she get her gowns out of Noah's Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you see her hair, sir?"
"For my part, I don't favour that bright yaller for hair, Mr. Johnny. I never knew but one woman have such, and she was more deceitful than a she-fox."
Lease touched his hat and drove off. He was cousin in a remote degree to poor Maria Lease, and to Lease the pointsman who had caused the accident to the train at Crabb junction and died of the trouble. At that moment, Fred Scott came up; a short, dark young fellow, with fierce black whiskers, good-natured and rather soft. He was fond of playing billiards at the Bell at Islip; had been doing it for some years now.