Down fell
her wavy, long, brown hair almost to her feet, one rich strand trailing
over the rail as she mounted the steps, while the rustling of her muslin
dress told off the springy motion of her limbs till she disappeared in the
gilt-papered gloom aloft, where the windowless hall turned at right angles
with the stairway.
Colonel Sommerton was smiling grimly by this time, and his iron-gray
mustache quivered humorously.
"She's a little brick," he muttered; "a chip off the old log--by zounds,
she is! She means business. Got the bit in her teeth, and fairly splitting
the air!" He chuckled raucously. "Let her go; she'll soon tire out."
Sommerton Place, a picturesque old mansion, as mansions have always gone in
north Georgia, stood in a grove of oaks on a hill-top overlooking a little
mountain town, beyond which uprose a crescent of blue peaks against a
dreamy summer sky. Behind the house a broad plantation rolled its
billow-like ridges of corn and cotton.
The Colonel went out on the veranda and lit a cigar, after breaking two or
three matches that he nervously scratched on a column.
This was the first quarrel that he had ever had with Phyllis.
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