I rose to my feet with battle in my eyes and then stopped perfectly

still and listened--unwillingly but compelled.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes

And I will pledge with mine," were the words that floated in at the window on the fragrant morning

sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt

break against my heartstrings.

"I--I--he sometimes demolishes a--a few weeds," father faltered, while

Dabney ducked his cotton-wool old head and slipped out of the door.

"You allow him to work in my--garden--and--" I faltered, just recovering

from the impact of the words of my favorite song of songs hurled at me

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by the unseen enemy, when I was interrupted by his appearance in the

open door and we stood facing each other.

I am a woman who has very decided tastes about the biological man. I

know just how I want the creatures to look, and I haven't much interest

in one that isn't at least of the type of my preferred kind. Because I

am very tall and broad and deep-bosomed and vivid and high colored, and

have strong white teeth that crunch up about as much food in the

twenty-four hours as most field hands consume, and altogether I am very

much like one of the most vigorous of Sorolla's paintings, that is the

probable pathological reason I have always preferred an evolved Whistler

masculine nocturne that retreats to the limits of my comprehension and

then beckons me to follow. All other men I have grouped beyond the

border of my feminine nature and sought to waste no thought upon them.

It was a shock to come, suddenly, in my own breakfast room, face to face

with a type of man I had never before met. The enemy was astonishingly

large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored

lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond

Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved

majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of

worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly

strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an

exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see,

matched glints from eyes back under his heavy gold brows with what

appeared to be extreme sophistication. After the shock of the tie the

loose gray London worsted coat and trousers made only a passing

impression; and from my involuntary summary of the whole surprising man,

which had taken less than an instant, my dazed brain came back and was

held and concentrated by the beauty of the smile that flooded out over

me in welcome after my father's hurried introduction.

"The Reverend Mr. Gregory Goodloe--my daughter Charlotte," father

announced, as he rose and waved in my direction a hand that was cordial

to the point of bravado.




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