In this neglected little room, with its festoons of cobwebs, its musty
smell and its sense of old, forgotten things and people, she would
tuck herself away with a pocket full of apples, to study and read by
the hour.

The Colonel had done his part, and she was determined to do hers; for
three years she kept sturdily at it, devouring the things she could
understand, and blithely skipping those she could not, extracting
meanwhile a vast amount of pleasure out of each passing day. For the
thing that differentiated Miss Lady from the rest of her fellow kind
was that she was usually glad. She liked to get up in the morning and
to go to bed at night, a peculiarity in itself sufficiently great to
individualize her. She greeted each new experience with enthusiasm and
managed to extract the largest possible quota of happiness out of the
smallest and most insignificant occasion.

As she went singing through the hall, the Colonel tried to frown over
his glasses, but he was only partially successful. She was too
satisfying a sight with her shining hair and eyes, and lithe, supple
figure, every motion of which bespoke that quick, unconscious freedom
of body peculiar to children and those favored of the gods, who never
grow old.

The tall, awkward young man who had by this time arrived at the porch,
followed the Colonel's gaze, and then, without speaking, sat down on
the steps and clasped his hands about his knees. Noah Wicker's
awkwardness, however manifest to others, was evidently a matter of
small moment to him. He had apparently accepted the companionship of
unmanageable arms and legs without question, and without