“Editha!” he murmured faintly, all his being resolved into eyes, as he checked old Whitey and drew up close to the curb.
No meager old woman this, wont to hold herself a trifle stoop-shouldered, to walk with a slow, shuffling gait. Her thin figure was braced alertly, like some slender girl’s. She stepped briskly, lightly, from the high curb, and with two motions, as the soldiers say, she put her foot on the hub of the wheel and was seated beside him in the wagon. Then he saw her face, through the tunnel of her dark-blue sunbonnet, suffused with a pink bloom as delicate as a peach-blossom. Her eyes were as blue and as lustrous as the silk muffler, which the artist had doubtless selected with a realization of the accord of these fine tints. A curl of her silky, white hair lay on her forehead, and another much longer hung down beneath the curtain of her bonnet, scarcely more suggestive of age than if it had been discreetly powdered. Her lips were red, and there was a vibration of joyous excitement in her voice.
“Waal, sir, Shaftesvul!” she exclaimed, turning to survey the vanishing town, for it had required scarcely a moment to whisk them beyond its limited precincts. “It’s the beauty-spot of the whole world, sure. But,” she added as she settled herself straight on the seat and turned her face toward the ranges in the distance, “we must try ter put up with the mountings. One good thing is that we air used ter them, else hevin’ ter go back arter this trip would be powerful’ hard on us, sure. Benjie, who do ye reckon I met up with in Shaftesvul? Now, _who_?”
“I dunno,” faltered Benjie, all ajee and out of his reckoning. Luckily old Whitey knew the way home, for the reins lay slack on her back. “War it yer Cousin Lucindy Jane?” Benjie ventured.
“Cousin Lucindy Jane!” Editha echoed with a tone closely resembling contempt. “Of course I met up with Cousin Lucindy Jane, an’ war interjuced ter her cow an’ all her chickens. Cousin Lucindy Jane!” she repeated slightingly. Then essaying no further to foster his lame guesswork, “Benjie,” she laid her hand impressively on his arm, “I met up with Leroy Tresmon’!”
She gazed at him with wide, bright eyes, challenging his outbreak of surprise. But Benjie only dully fumbled with the name. “Leroy Tresmon’?” he repeated blankly. “Who’s him?”