talking."

She laughed aloud.

"Or laughing," he amended promptly. "Do it again."

"One can't laugh to order!" she protested; "or even talk to order.
But why do you stay 'way out here in the mountains if you're so
eager to hear the human voice?"

"The human voice be--choked! It's YOUR human voice I want to hear
--your kind of human voice, I mean." "I don't know that my kind of
human voice is particularly different from plenty of other human
voices," she observed, with an effect of fine impartial judgment.

"It's widely different from the kind that afflicts the suffering
ear in this part of the world. Fourteen months ago I heard the
last American girl speak the last American-girl language that's
come within reach of me. Oh, no,--there WAS one, since, but she
rasped like a rheumatic phonograph and had brick-colored
freckles. Have you got brick-colored freckles?"

"Stand up and see."

"No, SIR!--that is, ma'am. Too much risk."

"Risk! Of what?"

"Freckles. I don't like freckles. Not on YOUR voice, anyway."