faint suggestion of hostility in the set of his mouth.

Poor Tim! He has seen so little of women! We have them in our valley,
of course. But he and I lived much in the great book-land beyond the
hills. We had read together of all the heroines of the romances, and
we knew their little ways and their pretty speeches as well as if we
had ourselves walked with them through a few hundred pages and lived
happily ever after. They had been the women of our world as distinct
from the women of our valley. The last we knew as kindly, honest
persons with a faculty for twisting their English and a woful ignorance
of well-turned speeches. They never said "Fair Sir" nor "Master." But
I had gone from that book-world and had seen the women of the real
world. Here I had the advantage of my brother. Into his life a single
woman had come from the real world. She was different from the women
of our valley. I had known that the moment our eyes met, and by the
way Tim smoked now, and by the tone of his terse inquiry, I knew that
he had met a woman who had said "Fair Sir" to him, and I feared for
him. It was disturbing. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but whether for
the tall, strong young fellow before me, to whom I had been all, or for
the fair-faced girl, I could not for the life of me tell. It seemed to
be a bit of both.

"I remarked that she was attractive," said Tim aggressively, for I had
kept on smoking in silence.

"Rather," I answered carelessly. "But who is she--a stranger here?"

"Rather," repeated Tim hotly. "Well, you are blind. I suppose you
judged her by that ugly gray gown. You thought she was some pious
Dunkard."