"One does not quite understand," he suggested raising handsome eyebrows
in subtle disapproval; "the negro, the hay--the curious camp?"
Diane recalled Philip's unfeeling attitude of the night before.
"A happy-go-lucky young man with a taste for hay," she said. "I know
little of him."
"One treasures one's confidence from the unsympathetic," ventured the
minstrel. "Now the young man of the hay, I take it, is intensely
practical and let us say--unromantic. Lest he laugh and scoff--" he
shrugged and glanced furtively at the girl's face. It was brightly
flushed and very lovely. The velvet dusk of Diane's eyes was sparkling
with the zest of woodland adventure. To repose a confidence in one so
spirited and beautiful was fascinating sport--and safe.
Now the minstrel found as the morning waned that he was not so strong
as he had fancied. Wherefore he lay humbly by the fire and talked of
his fortunes by the roadside. Bits of philosophy, of sparkling jest,
of vivid description, to these Diane listened with parted lips and eyes
alive with wholesome interest as her guest contrived to veil himself in
a silken web of romance and mystery.
It was sunset before the girl felt uncomfortably that he ought to go.
A little later, on her way to the van, she found a volume of Herodotus
in the original Greek which with a becoming air of guilt the minstrel
owned that he had dropped.
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