"I reckon I will," she said with a happy smile.

Hale watched her while she munched a striped stick of peppermint.
Her crimson bonnet had fallen from her sunlit hair and straight
down from it to her bare little foot with its stubbed toe just
darkening with dried blood, a sculptor would have loved the
rounded slenderness in the curving long lines that shaped her
brown throat, her arms and her hands, which were prettily shaped
but so very dirty as to the nails, and her dangling bare leg. Her
teeth were even and white, and most of them flashed when her red
lips smiled. Her lashes were long and gave a touching softness to
her eyes even when she was looking quietly at him, but there were
times, as he had noticed already, when a brooding look stole over
them, and then they were the lair for the mysterious loneliness
that was the very spirit of Lonesome Cove. Some day that little
nose would be long enough, and some day, he thought, she would be
very beautiful.

"Your cousin, Loretta, said she was coming over to see you."

June's teeth snapped viciously through the stick of candy and then
she turned on him and behind the long lashes and deep down in the
depth of those wonderful eyes he saw an ageless something that
bewildered him more than her words.

"I hate her," she said fiercely.

"Why, little girl?" he said gently.