kid, she is good. The neighbors all love her. She waits on
them when they are sick. Away late at night not long ago a farmer come
to get her to go stay with his sick wife, and Tilly--that's her
name--was away till sunup, and then came home and milked the cows and
worked around the kitchen. She needs a long rest and she shall have it.
I'll see that she gets it, and plenty of clothes and pretty things,
besides. She is having an awfully hard time and that is one reason I
don't feel so bad about asking her to--to come with just me. I am going
into partnership with Sam later, and he and I will both make more money
and I'll buy things for her. She plays an organ. I'll get her one. She
shall tote the pocket-book, too. She has been skimped all her life. I
know. I've had my eyes open up there. She never buys a thing, even a bit
of ribbon, without her old daddy fingering it and calling her down for
spending money for show, and it was her money, too, bless your life! She
sells butter and eggs, takes them to the store herself. She has a little
garden-patch all her own, and I've seen her out in it even in the rain,
picking beans and peas to sell."

"If she is like that"--Dora was precociously and pessimistically wise
for one so young, the fact being due, no doubt, to the tutelage of the
two worldly women who were her sole companions--"if she is like that, it
looks like some lazy feller would have got her before this. Aunt Jane
says it takes money and clothes and lots of things to keep any man
coming regular."

"There is--there _was_ another fellow," John put in, unctuously, "but
she turned him down. Lord! Lord! it broke him all to pieces! She just
somehow couldn't tie to him. She told me so out of her own mouth."

"What is she like?" Dora then demanded. "What does she look like?"

"Don't ask me," John smiled. "I can't tell you. When we walk together
she strikes me about here," his hand on his left shoulder. "She has blue
eyes, brown wavy hair, a pretty mouth, and a nose with a cute little
tilt to it. There are bits of brown freckles on her wrists and cheeks,
but they don't matter. If anything, I like them. I wouldn't rub them
off. Folks don't say she is pretty--even Sam don't; but why I can't see,
for she is simply stunning, and you'll say so, kid, when you see her."

"Well, I won't tell-- I won't tell," Dora promised, returning with
lowered interest to her rag things after the flight with him into his
empyrean.

Here a voice