"You've seed me--seen me, I mean--before. But it's right natcher'l fer ye to fergit it, because it was a long spell back. You gave me the first Christmas gift I ever got in my life--a piece of plum cake. Do you remember me now?"
The light of recollection broke over her face, illuminating it--and Anne Masters had those eyes that actually sparkle within--the dancing eyes that are much rarer than the phrase.
"Of course I remember you! I've thought about you--lots. I've always called you the 'fruit-cake boy.'" Suddenly her laugh rippled out in a lilting merriment. "Don't you remember when you challenged Morgan with the fencing foils?"
"Oh," exclaimed Boone, flushing, "I'd plumb disremembered that."
It was June, with days of diamond weather and the bloom still upon wild rose and rhododendron. Anne looked away beyond the boy's head to the tallest crest of the many that ringed the town. Suddenly she demanded: "Have you ever been up there--at the tip-top of that mountain?"
He nodded his head, and she at once commanded: "I want you to show me the way up there--I want to go up and climb to the top of that tree that you can see from here, the one that stands up higher than all the others."
Boone shook his head soberly. "It's a right hazardous undertakin' fer anybody thet isn't used to scalin' clifts," he objected. "Why do you want to go up there to the top of old Slag-face?"
Her expression had clouded to autocratic displeasure at his failure of immediate assent, but only for an instant; then her eyes altered again from coercive frown to irresistible smile.
"Why?" she exclaimed. "Why does a bird want to fly? Up there at the top of that tree you'd be almost in the sky. You'd be looking down on everything but the clouds themselves. When I was a little girl--" she announced suddenly, "they had a hard time persuading me that I _couldn't_ fly. They had to keep watching me, because I'd climb up on things and try to fly down."
"Have you plumb outgrown that idee?" he inquired, somewhat drily. "Because I'm not cravin' to help you fly offen that mountain top."
Her laugh rippled out like bird notes as she replied with large scorn of fourteen years: "_That_ was when I was a child."
After a moment she added appealingly: "The last time I saw you, General Prince said that when I came to these hills, you'd be 'charitable' to me."