Windy Creek

r hands; girls smiling and self-conscious. Three or four young men clustered about the pretty sisters at Soph Crimp's side. These girls with flower-like faces, so slenderly formed, were as unlike as could be to the buxom variety of damsel abounding on Windy Creek. They were pictures; the one in red calico and ribbons, the other in blue. One was wild as a gypsy; a gentle dignity, inborn, marked the other. To the boys their easy, taking manners were irresistible. But in spite of masculine attention, the two strangers of their own sex were remembered, and the sisters came up smiling to shake hands. Ruth Wood introduced them to her cousin as Diantha and Estelle Bittern. " You girls must come over. I and Stelle 'd be right glad to have you come out and spend the day," said Diantha; she had the soft negro tones of the " way-down " Southerner. She looked down at Ruth from her queenly height. " You're lookin' right peart-like, Ruth; I 'low you'll git well if you stay out chur long." " And how well you are looking, Diantha!" Ruth's tone of admiration deepened the pink color in the girl's cheek, but she replied, deprecatingly: " I'm jest toler'ble. I don't look it in the face, but I'm consider'- ble porer than what I was last chur." " Are you going to be immersed to-day ? " asked Ruth. " No, but my two married sisters aim to be, and my brother-in-law, Viny's husband, if he don't git scairt out o' the notion. Viny's been sayin' she darsn't trust Joelo... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.