"Joan! Joan!" it called. "Where are you, dear?"
The little girl answered, and Ross Shanklin saw a woman, clad in a
soft, clinging gown, come through the gate from the bungalow. She was a
slender, graceful woman, and to his charmed eyes she seemed rather to
float along than walk like ordinary flesh and blood.
"What have you been doing all afternoon?" the woman asked, as she came
up.
"Talking, mamma," the little girl replied. "I've had a very interesting
time."
Ross Shanklin scrambled to his feet and stood watchfully and awkwardly.
The little girl took the mother's hand, and she, in turn, looked at him
frankly and pleasantly, with a recognition of his humanness that was a
new thing to him. In his mind ran the thought: _the woman who ain't
afraid_. Not a hint was there of the timidity he was accustomed to
seeing in women's eyes. And he was quite aware, and never more so, of
his bleary-eyed, forbidding appearance.
"How do you do?" she greeted him sweetly and naturally.
"How do you do, ma'am," he responded, unpleasantly conscious of the
huskiness and rawness of his voice.
"And did you have an interesting time, too!" she smiled.
"Yes, ma'am. I sure did.
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