stood in the door-yard piled with trunks. The front entrance of
the house--rarely used by the family--was open, and as he came up
the lane a young girl emerged from it, and leaned for a few moments
against the outer pillar of the little porch, unconscious of the
picture she made. A climbing rose was in bloom just over her head,
and her cheeks, flushed with heat and fatigue, vied with them
in color. She had exchanged her travelling-dress for one of light
muslin, and entwined in her hair a few buds from the bush that
covered the porch. If Roger was not gifted with a vivid imagination
he nevertheless saw things very accurately, and before he reached
the head of the lane admitted to himself that the old "front steps"
had never been so graced before. He had seen many a rustic beauty
standing there when his sister had company, but the city girl
impressed him with a difference which he then could not understand.
He was inclined to resent this undefined superiority, and he muttered,
"Father's right. They are birds of too fine a feather for our nest."

He had to pass near her in order to reach the kitchen door, or else
make a detour which his pride would not permit. Indeed, the youth
plodded leisurely along with his hoe on his shoulder, and scrupled
not to scrutinize the vision on the porch with the most matter-of-fact
minuteness.

"What makes her so 'down in the mouth'?" he queried. "She doesn't
fancy us barbarians, I suppose, and Forestville to her is a howling
wilderness. Like enough she'll take me for an Indian."

Mildred's eyes were fixed on a great shaggy mountain in the west,
that was all the more dark and forbidding in its own deep shadow.
She did not see it, however, for her mind was dwelling on gloomier