jingling joyously out into
the dazzling moonshine.

* * * * *

In bed, the window open, and the covers pulled to her chin, Rue lay
wakeful, living over again the pleasures of the evening; and Neeland's
face was always before her open eyes, and his pleasant voice seemed to
be sounding in her ears. As for the kiss, it did not trouble her.
Girls she went with were not infrequently so saluted by boys. That,
being her own first experience, was important only in that degree. And
she shyly thought the experience agreeable. And, as she recalled,
revived, and considered all that Neeland had said, it seemed to her
that this young man led an enchanted life and that such as he were
indeed companions fit for princesses.

"Princess Mistchenka," she repeated aloud to herself. And somehow it
sounded vaguely familiar to the girl, as though somewhere, long ago,
she had heard another voice pronounce the name.

CHAPTER V

EX MACHINA

After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil and
dyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not find
her work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It was like any work, she
imagined, an uninteresting task which had to be done.

The majority of the girls and young men of the village worked there in
various capacities; wages were fair, salaries better, union
regulations prevailed. There was nothing to complain of.

And nothing to expect except possible increase in wages, holidays, and
a disquieting chance of getting caught in the machinery, which
familiarity soon discounted.

As for the social status of the mill workers, the mill _was_ Gayfield;
and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the
Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction
in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a
Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where
the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically "done"; where
distrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled only by
a passion for moving pictures and automobiles; where the school
trustees used double negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonial
considerables--who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" or
with a Maltese cross--the world in miniature, with its due proportion
of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity,
laziness, ambition, stupidity, intel