from its pain.
She remembered well the time he had once before visited Chicopee. She
was a little girl of ten, fleeing across the meadow-land from a maddened
cow, when a tall, athletic young man had come to her rescue, standing
between her and danger, helping her over the fence, picking up the apron
full of apples which she had been purloining from the Captain's orchard,
and even pinning together a huge rent made in her dress by catching it
upon a protruding splint as she sprang to the ground. She was too much
frightened to know whether he had been wholly graceful in his endeavors
to serve her, and too thankful for her escape to think that possibly her
torn dress was the result of his rather awkward handling. She remembered
only the dark, handsome face which bent so near to hers, the brown,
curly head actually bumping against her own, as he stooped to gather the
stolen apples. She remembered, too, the kindly voice which asked if "her
aunt would scold," while the large, red hands pinned together the
unsightly seam, and she liked the Westerner, as the people of Chicopee
called the stranger who had recently come among them. Frank was in
Chicopee then, fishing on the river, when her mishaps occurred; and once
after that, when walking with him, she had met Richard Markham, who
bowed modestly and passed on, never taking his hands from his pockets
where they were planted so firmly, and never touching his hat as Frank
said a gentleman would have done.

"Isn't he handsome?" Ethelyn had asked, and Frank had answered, "Looks
well enough, though anybody with half an eye would know he was a codger
from the West. His pants are a great deal too short; and look at his
coat--at least three years behind the fashion; and such a hat, with that
rusty old band of crape around it. Wonder if he is in mourning for his
grandmother. Oh, my! we boys would hoot him in Boston. He's what I
call a gawky."

That settled it with Ethelyn. If fourteen-year-old Frank Van Buren,
whose pants and coats and neckties and hats were always the latest make,
said that Richard Markham was a gawky, he was one, and henceforth during
his stay in Chicopee, the Western young man was regarded by Ethelyn with
a feeling akin to pity for his benighted condition. Aunt Barbara's pew
was very near to Captain Markham's, and Richard, who was not much of a
churchman, and as often as any way lounged upon the faded damask
curtains, instead of standing up, often met Ethelyn's brown