stood there she was lovelier than any being he had ever seen before)
appalled Frank Layson, son of level regions, graduate of Harvard, casual
sportsman, amateur mountaineer, who had come to look over his patrimony
and the country round about.

"Ah--yes," said he, and frowned. And then: "It leaves you in hard luck,
though, doesn't it, if you want to learn and can't," said he.

"It sartin does, for--oh, I _do_ hanker powerful to learn!"

"May I stay here by the fire with you a while and get warm, too," he
asked. (The unaccustomed exercise of tramping through the mountains had
kept him in a fever heat all day.)

"An' welcome," she said cordially, moving aside a bit, so that he could
approach without the circumnavigation of a mighty stump.

He could not tell whether or not she had made note of many sweat-beads
on his brow and wondered at them on a chilly man.

"Perhaps," said he, "I might, in a few minutes, show you a little about
what you want to know. I've been lucky. I have had a chance to learn."

She liked the way he said it. There was no hint of superiority about it.
He was not "stuck up," in his claim of knowledge. He "had had a chance,"
and took no credit to himself for it. This pleased her, won her
confidence--if, already, that had not been done by his frank face, in
spite of his fancy clothes and her assumption that he was a namby-pamby
weakling.