gentle, unsinning Amelia ever having been born, might or might not have
been true. It would have been harder work, reflected the girl in the
grass, for Amelia to have been unsinning and gentle, if she had been born.

Jane Cotton's Sam came lounging down the road, cap over one eye, face
surlily defiant. T.O. watched him with displeasure. So that was the kind
of a boy that gave up? Poor kind of a boy! Why didn't he try it again,
especially when his poor mother's heart was breaking? Didn't he know
that giving up was worse than failing in his examinations? Somebody
ought to tell him--why, he was stopping at Mrs. Camp's little front
gate! He was coming in!

The girl lying in the long grass under the tree sat up hurriedly. Quick,
quick! what was his name? Oh, yes, Sam!

"Good-morning, Sam," she said pleasantly. But the boy, with a mere nod
of his splendidly-modeled head, hurried away toward the tiny barn. The
girl had seen the dark flush that mounted upward from his neck over his
pink and white cheeks.

"Poor thing! He knows _I_ know that he didn't pass--that is the
only 'out' about living in the country: everybody knows everything.
Well, if it makes him blush, then his mother needn't break her heart
_yet_. I like the looks of that boy, if he does go 'round
scowling." Whereupon the Talented One promptly dismissed Jane Cotton's
Sam from her meditations. It did not occur to her to question his right
to be on Mrs. Camp's premises. She lay back in the grass and took up
again the interrupted thread of her musings. By gentle degrees odd
fancies took possession of her.