"What you run for?" she asked, with dancing mischief in her eyes.
"Because--" he hesitated, and his cheeks grew hot.
"I knows," she said, with impish glee, laughing low music.
"Why?" he challenged, sturdily.
"You was a-feared."
He bridled. "Well, I reckon you'd be a-feared if you was caught out in the black dark all alone."
"Pooh!" she scoffed and hugged her knees. "Pooh! I've stayed out all alone heaps o' nights."
He looked at her with a curious awe.
"I don't believe you," he asserted; but she tossed her head and her eyes grew scornful.
"Who's a-feared of the dark? I love night." Her eyes grew soft.
He watched her silently, till, waking from her daydream, she abruptly asked: "Where you from?"
"Georgia."
"Where's that?"
He looked at her in surprise, but she seemed matter-of-fact.
"It's away over yonder," he answered.
"Behind where the sun comes up?"
"Oh, no!"
"Then it ain't so far," she declared. "I knows where the sun rises, and I knows where it sets." She looked up at its gleaming splendor glinting through the leaves, and, noting its height, announced abruptly: "I'se hungry."
"So'm I," answered the boy, fumbling at his bundle; and then, timidly: "Will you eat with me?"
"Yes," she said, and watched him with eager eyes.
Untying the strips of cloth, he opened his box, and disclosed chicken and biscuits, ham and corn-bread. She clapped her hands in glee.
"Is there any water near?" he asked.
Without a word, she bounded up and flitted off like a brown bird, gleaming dull-golden in the sun, glancing in and out among the trees, till she paused above a tiny black pool, and then came tripping and swaying back with hands held cupwise and dripping with cool water.
"Drink," she cried. Obediently he bent over the little hands that seemed so soft and thin. He took a deep draught; and then to drain the last drop, his hands touched hers and the shock of flesh first meeting flesh startled them both, while the water rained through. A moment their eyes looked deep into each other's--a timid, startled gleam in hers; a wonder in his. Then she said dreamily: "We'se known us all our lives, and--before, ain't we?"
He hesitated.
"Ye--es--I reckon," he slowly returned. And then, brightening, he asked gayly: "And we'll be friends always, won't we?"