The greater girl had been lightly touched with that
unnamable force which has changed men and women throughout all the ages.
The picture of Ab's earnest face was in her mind and would not depart. She
could not, of course, define her own mood, nor did she attempt it. She
felt within herself a certain quaking, as of fear, at the thought of him,
and yet, so she told herself again and again, she was not afraid. All the
time she could see Ab's face, with its look of longing and possession, but
with something else in it, when his eyes met hers, which she could not
name nor understand. She could not speak of him, but Moonface had upon her
no such stilling influence.
"They look alike," she said.
Lightfoot assented, knowing the girl meant Ab and Oak. "But Ab is taller
and stronger," Moonface continued, and Lightfoot assented as
indifferently, for, somehow, of the two she had remembered definitely one
only. She became daring in her reflections: "What if he should want to
carry me to his cave?" and then she tried to run away from the thought and
from anything and everybody else, leaping forward, outracing and leaving
all the company. She reached her father's cave far ahead of the others and
stood, laughing, at the entrance, as the family and Moonface, a guest for
the night, came trotting up.
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