ily. They both glanced up.
Stephen Strangewey was coming slowly toward them along the flinty path.
Louise, suddenly herself again, rose briskly to her feet.

"Here comes your brother," she said. "I wish he wouldn't glower at me
so! I really am not such a terrible person as he seems to think."

John muttered a word or two of polite but unconvincing protest. They
stood together awaiting his approach. Stephen had apparently lost none
of his dourness of the previous night. He was dressed in gray homespun,
with knickerbockers and stockings of great thickness. He wore a flannel
shirt and collar and a black wisp of a tie. Underneath his battered felt
hat his weather-beaten face seemed longer and grimmer than ever, his
mouth more uncompromising. As he looked toward Louise, there was no
mistaking the slow dislike in his steely eyes.

"Your chauffeur, madam, has just returned," he announced. "He sent word
that he will be ready to start at one o'clock."

Louise, inspired to battle by the almost provocative hostility of her
elder host, smiled sweetly upon him.

"You can't imagine how sorry I am to hear it," she said. "I don't know
when, in the whole course of my life, I have met with such a delightful
adventure or spent such a perfect morning!"

Stephen looked at her with level disapproving eyes--at her slender form
in its perfectly fitting tailored gown; at her patent shoes, so
obviously unsuitable for her surroundings, and at the faint vision of
silk stockings.

"If I might say so without appearing inhospitable," he remarked, with
faint sarcasm, "this would seem to be the fitting moment for your
departure. A closer examination of our rough life up here might alter
your views."

She turned toward John, and caught the deprecating glance which flashed
from him to Stephen.

"Your brother is making fun of me," she declared. "He looks at me and
judges me just as I believe he would judge most people--sternly and
without mercy. After all, you know, even though I am a daughter of the
cities, there is another point of view--ours. Can you not believe that
the call which prompts men and women to do the things in life which are
really worth while is heard as often amid the hubbub of the city as in
the solitude of these austere hills?"

"The question is a bootless one," Stephen answered firmly. "The city
calls to its own, as the country holds its children, and both do best in
their own environment. Like to like, and each bird to hi