Loretta lingered a moment and
when June closed the piano and the two girls went into the main
room, a tall figure, entering, stopped in the door and stared at
June without speaking:
"Why, howdye, Uncle Rufe," said Loretta. "This is June. You didn't
know her, did ye?" The man laughed. Something in June's bearing
made him take off his hat; he came forward to shake hands, and
June looked up into a pair of bold black eyes that stirred within
her again the vague fears of her childhood. She had been afraid of
him when she was a child, and it was the old fear aroused that
made her recall him by his eyes now. His beard was gone and he was
much changed. She trembled when she shook hands with him and she
did not call him by his name Old Judd came in, and a moment later
the two men and Bub sat on the porch while the women worked, and
when June rose again to go indoors, she felt the newcomer's bold
eyes take her slowly in from head to foot and she turned crimson.
This was the terror among the Tollivers--Bad Rufe, come back from
the West to take part in the feud. HE saw the belt and the
stockings and the shoes, the white column of her throat and the
proud set of her gold-crowned head; HE knew what they meant, he
made her feel that he knew, and later he managed to catch her eyes
once with an amused, half-contemptuous glance at the simple
untravelled folk about them, that said plainly how well he knew
they two were set apart from them, and she shrank fearfully from
the comradeship that the glance implied and would look at him no
more.
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