A Prologue To Love Read Online Free Page A

virile, his chin deeply dimpled.
     
    “I’m Tom Sheldon,” he said. His voice was strong, almost manly, and full of warmth and gaiety. “You’re not scared of me, are you? Why, I’m your neighbor. We live only about a mile from you. You’re Caroline Ames, aren’t you, old Ames’ girl? Heard about you in the village.”
     
    Caroline did not answer. Old Kate was always warning her not to speak to strangers. “One never knows,” she would say wisely with a menacing gleam in her eyes. Caroline had come to believe, in spite of Beth’s fitful efforts, that those one did not know were in some way ominous. The little girl began to shift uneasily on the boulder. She glanced at the house; if the boy ‘did’ something, this terrible easy boy, she would scream and Beth would come running.
     
    “You scared?” said Tom, and laughed in her face. He studied her, his head held sideways. “Say, you’re not as homely as everybody says. Say, you’re almost nice-looking.” He peered at her, thrusting out his head. “Why don’t you ever come to the village? The old man keep you locked up?”
     
    Caroline, to her immense surprise, heard her voice answering with weak indignation. “He’s not an old man! Don’t you dare talk like that! I don’t know you. I’m going home.” She dropped to the shingle, then paused, for Tom was laughing at her. For some reason her anger vanished. He had said she wasn’t homely!
     
    She did not know how to talk with strangers, and her lips fumbled. She said proudly, “My papa is coming home. I just saw his ship.”
     
    “You mean that old ship that just went by?” asked Tom, waving his hand toward the sea. “Why, that was nothing but an old freighter. I can tell. Your pa on a freighter?”
     
    Caroline was silent a moment. She reflected. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “It’s suppertime. I’ve got to go in.”
     
    Tom put his cold hands in his pockets and eyed her with humor. “They say your pa is as rich as Croesus,” he remarked.
     
    “Who’s Croesus?” asked Caroline, preparing to run off.
     
    Tom shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know,” he replied. “But that’s what they say.”
     
    “You swore,” said Caroline reprovingly. She pulled the shawl closer about her broad shoulders. Then she did something she had never done before. She giggled. Tom regarded her with approval. “Hell,” he repeated, hoping to evoke another giggle. “You sure aren’t so damn homely.”
     
    He gazed at the stocky little girl, with her big shoulders and her very short neck, her heavy arms and heavier legs, her bulky body in its wretched dark red coat. She had a clumsy, slow manner. Her square face had a stolid look and was without color in spite of the bitter gale, and her mouth was large and without mobility, her nose almost square, with coarse nostrils and spattered with large brown freckles. Her solid chin would have suited a youth rather than a girl child, and so short was her neck that it forced a fold of pallid flesh under the chin. Her very fine dark hair, wisping out from its thin long braids, did not lighten her unprepossessing appearance. The wind dashed her braids in the air like whips.
     
    Caroline was tall for her age, but she was half a head shorter than Tom. The children stared at each other, face to face. Caroline with reluctance and fear, but also with a desire to learn again that she was not truly ugly. She gave her benefactor a shy smile, and when she did so her eyes lit up and sparkled. They were remarkably beautiful eyes, a golden hazel, large and well set under her broad, bare forehead and sharp black eyebrows, and they possessed lashes incredibly thick, and they were extremely soft and intelligent, limpid in the last light from the sky.
     
    “There!” said Tom. “Why, you’re real pretty when you smile. You’ve got real pretty eyes, and nice white teeth, too, though they’re kind of big.” He was pleased with himself; he had discovered something