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قراءة كتاب Otherwise Phyllis

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Otherwise Phyllis

Otherwise Phyllis

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 8]"/>the cornfield was rewarded by a comprehensive view of the scene within. The music ceased and she heard voices—gay, happy voices—greeting some late-comers whose automobile had just "chug-chugged" into the barnyard. She saw, beyond the brilliantly lighted interior, the motors and carriages that had conveyed the company to the dance; and she caught a glimpse of the farmhouse itself, where doubtless refreshments were even now in readiness. Phil was far enough away to be safe from observation and yet near enough to identify many of the dancers. They were chiefly young people she had known all her life, and the strangers were presumably friends of the Holtons from Indianapolis and elsewhere.

The strains of a familiar waltz caused a quick reassembling of the dancers. The music tingled in Phil's blood. She kept time with head and hands, and then, swinging round, began dancing, humming the air as her figure swayed and bent to its cadences. By some whim the nearest corn-shock became the center of her attention. Round and round it she moved, with a child's abandon; and now that the moon's full glory lay upon the fields, her shadow danced mockingly with her. Fauns and nymphs tripped thus to wild music in the enchanted long ago when the world was young. Hers was the lightest, the most fantastic of irresponsible shadows. It was not the mere reflection of her body, but a prefigurement of her buoyant spirit, that had escaped from her control and tauntingly eluded capture. Her mind had never known a morbid moment; she had never feared the dark, without or within. And this was her private affair—a joke between her and the moon and the earth. It was for the moment all hers—earth and heaven, the mystery of the stars, the slumbering power of a beneficent land that only yesterday had vouchsafed its kindly fruits in reward of man's labor.

After a breathless interval a two-step followed, and Phil danced again, seizing a corn-stalk and holding it above her head with both hands like a wand. When the music ended she poised on tiptoe and flung the stalk far from her toward the barn as though it were a javelin. Then as she took a step toward the fence she was aware that some one had been watching her. It was, indeed, a nice question whether the flying stalk had not grazed the ear of a man who stood on Holton soil, his arms resting on the rail just as hers had been ten minutes earlier, and near the same spot.

"'Lo!" gasped Phil breathlessly.

"'Lo!"

They surveyed each other calmly in the moonlight. The young man beyond the fence straightened and removed his hat. He had been watching her antics round the corn-shock and Phil resented it.

"What were you doing that for?" she demanded indignantly, her hands in her sweater pockets.

"Doing what, for instance?"

"Watching me. It wasn't fair."

"Oh, I liked your dancing; that was all."

"Oh!"

An "Oh" let fall with certain intonations is a serious impediment to conversation. The young gentleman seemed unable at this crucial instant to think of a fitting reply. Finding himself unequal to a response in her own key he merely said:—

"I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to. I came over here to sit on the fence and watch the party."

"Watch it! Why don't you go in and dance?"

He glanced down as though to suggest that if Phil were to scrutinize his raiment she might very readily understand why, instead of being among the dancers, he contented himself with watching them from a convenient fence corner. He carried a crumpled coat on his arm; the collar of his flannel shirt was turned up round his throat. His hat was of battered felt with a rent in the creased crown.

"My brother and sister are giving the party. I'm not in it."

"I suppose your invitation got lost in the mail," suggested Phil, this being a form of explanation frequently proffered by local humorists for their failure to appear at Montgomery functions.

"Nothing like that! I didn't expect to be here to-day. In fact, I've been off trying to borrow a team of horses; one of mine went lame. I've just brought them home, and I'm wondering how long I've got to wait before the rumpus is over and those folks get out of there and give the horses a chance. It's going to rain before morning."

Phil had heard the same prognostication from her father, and it was in the young man's favor that he was wise in weather lore. The musicians had begun to play a popular barn dance, and the two spectators watched the dancers catch step to it. Then Phil, having by this time drawn a trifle closer to the fence and been reassured by her observations of the clean-shaven face of the young man, became personal.

"Are you Charlie Holton?"

"No; Fred. Charlie's my brother."

"And your sister's name is Ethel."

"O. K. I'm trying to figure you out. If you weren't so tall I'd guess you were Phyllis Kirkwood."

"That's all of my name," replied Phil. "I remember you now, but you must have been away a long time. I hadn't heard that anybody was living over there."

"The family haven't been here much since I was a kid. They have moved out their things. What's left is mine."

Mr. Frederick Holton turned and extended the hand that held his hat with a comprehensive gesture. There was a tinge of irony in his tone that Phil did not miss. "What's left here—house, barn, and land—belongs to me. The town house has been sold and Charlie and Ethel have come out here to say good-bye to the farm."

"Oh!"

This time Phil's "Oh" connoted mild surprise, polite interest, and faint curiosity.

The wind rustled the leaves among the corn-shocks. The moon gazed benevolently upon the barn, tolerant of the impertinence of man-made light and a gayety that was wholly inconsonant with her previous knowledge of this particular bit of landscape.

Fred Holton did not amplify his last statement, so Phil's "Oh," in so far as it expressed curiosity as to the disposition of the Holton territory and Mr. Frederick Holton's relation to it, seemed destined to no immediate satisfaction.

"I must skip," remarked Phil; though she did not, in fact, skip at once.

"Staying over at your grandfather's?" The young man's arm pointed toward the north and the venerable farmhouse long occupied by tenants of the Montgomerys.

Old Amzi had acquired much land in his day and his grandson, Amzi III, clung to most of it. But this little availed Phil, as we shall see. Still it was conceivable and pardonable that Fred Holton should assume that Phil was domiciled upon soil to which she had presumably certain inalienable rights.

"No; I've been camping and my father's waiting for me down there in Turkey Run. We've been here a month."

"It must be good fun, camping that way."

"Oh, rather! But it's tough—the going home afterwards."

"I hate towns myself. I expect to have some fun out here."

"I heard this farm had been sold," remarked Phil leadingly.

"Well, I suppose it amounts to that. They were dividing up father's estate, and I drew it."

"Well, it's not so much to look at," remarked Phil, as though the appraisement of farm property were quite in the line of her occupations. "I've been across your pasture a number of times on my way to Uncle Amzi's for milk, but I didn't know any one was living here. One can hardly mention your farm in terms of grandeur or splendor."

Fred Holton laughed, a cheerful, pleasant laugh. Phil had not thought of it before, but she decided now that she liked him. His voice was agreeable, and she noted his slight drawl. Phil's father, who was born in the Berkshires, said all Hoosiers drawled. As a matter of fact, Phil, who was indubitably a Hoosier, did not, save in a whimsical fashion of her own, to give

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