Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/118
“That’s why he suited me at that time.” Alice leaned over Corkscrew’s neck and caressed his chestnut mane, while her eyes invited a contradiction.
“It’s no use, wild horses would not drag a compliment out of me to-day, after you refused to meet me. I did think you had more friendship.”
“You haven’t told me how you came to be in our village yet,” she responded, thinking it more prudent to move the previous question. Like most country-bred Australians, Alice had begun to ride almost as soon as she could walk; indeed, to the dwellers on the great inland plains walking is an art of very secondary value. Her figure harmonized with every movement of the old hunter, as easily as a sea-gull adapts itself to the wave; and the soft evening air dyed her cheek with unwonted carnation and gave to eyes and smile the flitting transitory beauty that the poet celebrates as the greatest charm of all earthly things—
“A moment seen-then gone for ever.”
She had changed greatly from the untamed Bohemian girl of former days. The best art of the stage had by slow degrees formed and modulated her movements, and had given her figure