At present he was
keeping a boarding-house for the hands, and it was here Johnnie was to
find lodging. Shade himself was reported to be doing extremely well. He
had promised in his letter that if Johnnie came on a Sunday evening he
would walk up the road a piece and meet her. She now began to hope that
he would come. Then, waiting for him, she forgot him, and set herself to
imagine what work in the cotton mill and life in town would be like.
To Shade Buckheath, strolling up the road, in the expansiveness of his
holiday mood and the dignity of his Sunday suit, the first sight of
Johnnie came with a little unwelcome shock. He had left her in the
mountains a tall, thin, sandy-haired girl in the growing age. He got his
first sight of her profile relieved against the green of the wayside
bank, with a bunch of blooming azaleas starring its verdure behind her
bright head. He was not artist enough to appreciate the picture at its
value; he simply had the sudden resentful feeling of one who has asked
for a hen and been offered a bird of paradise. She was tall and lithe
and strong; her thick, fair hair, without being actually curly, seemed
to be so vehemently alive that it rippled a bit in its length, as a
swift-flowing brook does over a stone. It rose up around her brow in a
roll that was almost the fashionable coiffure. Those among whom she had
been bred, laconically called the colour red; but in fact it was only
too deep a gold to be quite yellow.
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