interest, their three faces close together: a jovial and round one, a pale one with dark hair, and a fair one whose tresses were auburn.
“Don’t push! You can see as well as I,” said Retty, the auburn-haired and youngest girl, without removing her eyes from the window.
“ ’Tis no use for you to be in love with him any more than me, Retty Priddle,” said jolly-faced Marian, the eldest, slyly. “His thoughts be of other cheeks than thine!”
Retty Priddle still looked, and the others looked again.
“There he is again!” cried Izz Huett, the pale girl with dark damp hair and keenly cut lips.
“You needn’t say anything, Izz,” answered Retty. “For I zid you kissing his shade.”
“ What did you see her doing?” asked Marian.
“Why—he was standing over the whey-tub to let off the whey, and the shade of his face came upon the wall behind, close to Izz, who was standing there filling a vat. She put her mouth against the wall and kissed the shade of his mouth; I zid her, though he didn’t.”
“O Izz Huett!” said Marian.
A rosy spot came into the middle of Izz Huett’s cheek.
“Well, there was no harm in it,” she declared, with attempted coolness. “And if I be in love wi’en, so is Retty, too; and so be you, Marian, come to that.”
Marian’s full face could not blush past its chronic pinkness.
“I!” she said. “What a tale! Ah, there he is again! Dear eyes—dear face—dear Mr. Clare!”