creature he had come to fight?

Mary Amber

Then Mary Amber felt his eyes upon her as he stood staring from the open hall door, and, lifting her own clear ones, froze into the opponent at once. A very polite opponent, it is true, with[46] all the grace of a young queen, but nevertheless an opponent, cold as a young icicle.

[46]

Miss Marilla with bright eyes and preternaturally pink cheeks spoke into the vast pause that suddenly surrounded them all, and her voice sounded strangely unnatural to herself.

“Dick, this is Mary Amber; I suppose you don’t remember her.”

And the young soldier, not yet quite recovered from that first sweet vision of Mary Amber, went forward with his belligerence to woman somewhat held in abeyance.

“You—have changed a good deal since then, haven’t you?” he managed to ask with his native quickness to say the right thing in an emergency.

“A good many years have passed,” she said, coolly putting out a reluctant hand to please Miss Marilla. “You[47] don’t look at all as you did. I never should have known you.”

[47]

The girl was looking keenly at him, studying his face closely. If a soldier just home from an ocean trip could get any redder, his face would have grown so under her scrutiny. Also, now he was face to face with her, he felt his objection to Girl in general receding before the fact of his own position. How had that ridiculous old woman expected him to carry off a situation like this without giving it away? How was he supposed to converse with a girl he had never seen before, about things he had never done,—with a girl with whom he was supposed to have played in his youth? Why had he been such a fool as to get into this corner just for the sake of one more dinner? Why, to-morrow he would need another dinner, and all the to-morrows through which he might have to live. What was one[48] dinner more or less? He felt in his hip pocket for the comforting assurance of his cap, and gave a furtive glance toward the hall door. It wouldn’t be far to bolt back to the road, and what would be the difference? He would never see either of the two again.

[48]

Then the sweet, anxious eyes of his hostess met his with an appealing smile and he felt himself powerless to move.

The girl’s eyes had swept over 

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