"Mushy! MUSHY!" Evadna sat up and stared at nothing at all while
she repeated the word under her breath. "She wants me to be
gentle--she preached gentleness in her letters, and told how her
boys need it, and then--she calls it being MUSHY!"

She reached mechanically for her hair-brush, and fumbled in a
tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its
way as were her eyes--Grant had shown a faculty for observing
keenly when he called her a Christmas angel--and drew out a half-
dozen hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor.
"MUSHY!" she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed
her face and those eyes of hers. "I suppose that's what they all
say behind my back. And how can a girl be nice WITHOUT being
mushy?" She drew the brush meditatively through her hair. "I am
scared to death of Indians," she admitted, with analytical
frankness, "and tarantulas and snakes--but--MUSHY!"

Grant stood smoking in the doorway of the sitting-room, where he
could look out upon the smooth waters of the pond darkening under
the shade of the poplars and the bluff behind, when Evadna came
out of her room. He glanced across at her, saw her hesitate, as
if she were meditating a retreat, and gave his shoulders a twitch
of tolerant amusement that she should be afraid of him. Then he
stared out over the pond again. Evadna walked straight over to
him.

"So you're that other savage whose manners I'm supposed to
smooth, are you?" she asked abruptly, coming to a stop within
three feet of him, and regarding him carefully, her hands clasped