"Aunt Mary Ann, I've come back, and brought a visitor with me!"
Mrs. Mary Ann Cramp, superintending the preserving of a pan of morella
cherries over the fire in her spacious kitchen, turned round in
surprise. I was perched on the arm of the old oak chair, watching the
process. I had gone to the farm with a message from Crabb Cot, and Mrs.
Cramp, ignoring ceremony, called me into the kitchen.
Standing at the door, with the above announcement, was Julietta
Chandler. She had been away on a fortnight's visit.
"Now where on earth did you spring from, Juliet?" asked Mrs. Cramp.
"I did not expect you to-day. A visitor? Who is it?"
"Cherry Dawson, Aunt Mary Ann; and I didn't think it mattered about
letting you know," returned Juliet. They had given up the longer name,
Julietta. "You can see her if you look through the window; she is
getting out of the fly at the gate. Cherry Dawson is the nicest
and jolliest girl in the world, and you'll all be in love with
her--including you, Johnny Ludlow."
Sure enough, there she was, springing from the fly which had brought
them from Crabb station. A light, airy figure in a fresh brown-holland
dress and flapping Leghorn hat. The kitchen window was open, and we
could hear her voice all that way off, laughing loudly at something and
chattering to the driver. She was very fair, with pretty white teeth,
and a pink colour on her saucy face.
Mrs. Cramp left Sally to the cherries, went to the hall door and opened
it herself, calling the other maid, Joan, to come down. The visitor flew
in with a run and a sparkling laugh, and at once kissed Mrs. Cramp on
both cheeks, without saying with your leave or by your leave. I think
she would not have minded kissing me, for she came dancing up and shook
my hand.
"It's Johnny Ludlow, Cherry," said Juliet.
"Oh, how delightful!" cried Miss Cherry.
She was really very unsophisticated; or--very much the other way. One
cannot quite tell at a first moment. But, let her be which she might,
there was one thing about her that took the eyes by storm. It was her
hair.
Whether her rapid movements had unfastened it, or whether she wore it
so, I knew not, but it fell on her shoulders like a shower of gold. Her
small face seemed to be set in an amber aureole. I had never before seen
hair so absolutely resembling the colour of pure gold. As she ran back
to Mrs. Cramp from me, it glittered in the sunlight. The shower of
gold in which Jupiter went courting Danaë could hardly have been more
seductive than this.
"I know you don't mind my coming uninvited, you dear Mrs. Cramp!" she
exclaimed joyously. "I did so want to make your acquaintance. And
Clementina was growing such a cross-patch. It's not Tim's fault if he
can't come back yet. Is it now?"
"I do not know anything about it," answered Mrs. Cramp, apparently not
quite sure what to make of her.
With this additional company I thought it well to come away, and wished
them good morning. At the gate stood the fly still, the horse resting.
"Like to take a lift, Mr. Johnny, as far as your place?" asked the man
civilly. "I am just starting back."
"No, thank you, Lease," I answered. "I am going across to Duck Brook."
"Curious young party that, ain't it, sir?" said Lease, pointing the whip
over his shoulder towards the house. "She went and asked me if Mrs.
Cramp warn't an old Image, born in the year One, and didn't she get her
gowns out of Noah's Ark? And while I was staring at her saying that, she
went off into shouts of laughter enough to frighten the horse. Did you
see her hair, sir?"