e that I
might really know you. Would you care to let me, Miss Herold?"

"Know me?" she repeated. "I don't think I understand."

"Could you and your father and brother regard me as a guest--as a friend
visiting the family?"

"Why?"

"Because," he said, "I'm the same kind of a man that you are a girl and
that your brother is a boy. Why, you know it, don't you? I know it. I
knew it as soon as I heard you speak, and when your brother came into
the room that first night with his Latin book, and when I saw your
mother's picture. So I know what your father must be. Am I not right?"

She lifted her proud little head and looked at him. "We are what you
think us," she said.

"Then let us stand in that relation, Miss Herold. Will you?"

She looked at him, perplexed, gray eyes clear and thoughtful. "Do you
mean that you really want me for a friend?" she asked calmly, but her
sensitive lip quivered a little.

"Yes."

"Do men make personal friends among their employees? Do they? I ask
because I don't know."

"What was your father before he came here?" he inquired bluntly.

She looked up, startled, then the color came slowly back to her cheeks.
"Isn't that a little impertinent, Mr. Marche?"

"Good heavens! Yes, of course it is!" he exclaimed, turning very red.
"Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to be rude or anything like it! I
merely meant that whatever reverses have happened to bring such a girl
as you down into this God-forsaken place have not altered what you were
and what you are. _Can_ you forgive me?"

"Yes. I'll tell you something. I _wanted_ to be a little more
significant to you than merely a paid guide. So did Jim. We--it is
rather lonely for us. You are the first real man who has come into our
lives in five years. Do you understand, Mr. Marche?"

"Of course I do."

"Are you sure you do? We would like to feel that we could talk to
you--Jim would. It is pleasant to hear a man from the real world
speaking. Not that the people here are unkind, only"--she looked up at
him almost wistfully--"we _are_ like you, Mr. Marche--and we feel
starved, sometimes."

He did not trust himself to speak, even to look at her, just at the
moment. Not heretofore sentimental, but always impressionable, he was
young enough to understand, wise enough not to misunderstand.

After a while, leaning back in the blind, he began, almost casually,
talking about things in that Northern world which had once been hers,
assuming their