half dismay, half pleasure.

Natalie had not escaped the hotel unobserved; as she went leisurely
waving her banners along the river path, a gross, burly figure with
downcast head followed, pausing when she paused, and taking advantage
of the taller bushes for cover. It was not characteristic of Natalie
to look behind her; she continued her zigzag course all unconscious;
sweeping her skirts through the grass, and ever and anon whistling
snatches like a bird. Presently finding herself among wild raspberry
bushes laden with fruit, she gave herself up to delicate feasting;
searching among the leaves bright-eyed, like a bird, and popping the
berries into her mouth--the raspberries paled beside the bloomy lips
that parted to receive them. At last she plumped down on a stone beside
the path; and gazing up the unknown river of her journey, thought her
birdlike thoughts.

Nick Grylls appeared around the bushes. For the fraction of a second
she was utterly dismayed; then sharply calling in her flying forces, she
nodded politely, as one nods to a passer-by; and looked elsewhere.

But the man had no intention of taking the hint. He had the grace to
pull off his hat--the first time he had bared his head to a woman in
many a long day--and he paused, awkwardly searching in his mind for the
ingratiating thing to say. What he finally blurted out was not at all
what he intended.

"You think I'm a coarse, rude fellow, Miss," he said with the air of a
whipped schoolboy.

Natalie's thoughts beat their wings desperately against her head. Here,
indeed, was a situation to try the pluck of a highly civilized young
lady. What should she do? What should she say? What tone should she
take? In the end she was quite honest.

"You have never given me any reason to think otherwise," she said. Her
secret agitation peeped out in the added briskness of her tones.

Grylls incessantly turned his hat brim in his fat freckled hands. "I am
not as bad as you think," he said dully. "Somehow I seem to have a worse
look when I am by you."

Natalie let it go at that.

"I ain't had early advantages," he continued. "I never learned how to
dress spruce; and talk good grammar. But a man may have good metal in
him for all that."

"Certainly!" said Natalie crisply.

"There ain't no reason why we shouldn't be friends," he said humbly.

"None at all," she returned. "Neither do I see any reason why we should
be."

"But say, I can help you up here," he sai