"Good morning," called Hanson in his blithest, most assured fashion.
"Can I come in?"
"Sure," drawled the Pearl. "Hughie and I were just waiting for company,
weren't we, Hughie?"
The boy tossed his head impatiently, but made no answer. From the moment
Hanson had spoken he had assumed an air of immobile and concentrated
attention, tense as that of an Indian listening and sighting in a
forest, or of a highly trained dog on guard.
"Take you at your word," laughed Hanson, and swung up the path, a big,
dominant presence, as vital as the morning. "Howdy," he shook hands with
Pearl and then turned to the boy, but Hugh drew quickly away from that
extended hand, quite as if he saw it before him.
Hanson raised his eyebrows in involuntary surprise, but his good humor
was unabated. "What's the good word with Hughie?" he asked genially. "I
can't call you anything else, because I don't know your last name."
"My name is Hugh Braddock," said the boy coldly.
Again Hanson lifted his brows, this time humorously, as at a child's
unexpected rebuff, and looked at Pearl, and again he experienced a
feeling of surprise, for she was gazing at Hugh with a puzzled frown,
which held a faint touch of apprehension.
"Then," Hanson looked from one to the other, but spoke to Pearl, "you
ain't brother and sister?"
"No," said Pearl, and it disturbed Hanson more than he would have
dreamed to notice the change in voice and manner. The warm, provocative,
inherent coquetry was gone from both smile and eyes; instead of a soft,
alluring girl ready to play with him a baffling, blood-stirring game of
flirtation, she was again the sphynx of last night, whose unrevealing
eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its
infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the
scarlet curves of her mouth its eternal, secret enigma.
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