r.

"No need,--no need. Do you think I don't know what name I go by, behind
my back? They suppose because I'm old and plain and single, and wear a
front, and don't understand rats and the German, that I'm deaf and blind
and stupid. But I believe I get as much as they do out of their jokes,
after all." The dear old soul took Leslie by both her hands as she
spoke, and looked a whole world of gentle benignity at her out of two
soft gray eyes, and then she laughed again. This woman had no _self_ to
be hurt.

"We stopped at the Cliff this morning," Leslie took heart to say; "and
they were so glad of your parcel,--the little girl and her aunt. And
Prissy gave me something to bring back to you; a splendid specimen of
beryl that she has found."

"Then my mind's at rest!" said Miss Craydocke, cheerier than ever. "I
was sure she'd break her neck, or pull the mountain down on her head
some day looking for it."

"Would you like--I've found--I should like you to have that, too,--a
garnet geode from Feather--Cap?" Leslie thought she had done it very
clumsily, and in a hurry, after all.

"Will you come over to my little room, dear,--number fifteen, in the
west wing,--to-morrow sometime, with your stones? I want to see more of
you."

There was a deliberate, gentle emphasis upon her words. If the grandest
person of whom she had ever known had said to Leslie Goldthwaite, "I
want to see more of you," she would not have heard it with a warmer
thrill than she felt that moment at her heart.

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE PINES.

It was a glorious July morning, and there was nothing particular on
foot. In the afternoon, there would be drives and walks, perhaps; for
some hours, now, there would be intensifying heat. The sun had burned
away every cloud that had hung rosy about his rising, and the great gray
flanks of Washington glared in a pale scorch close up under the sky,
whose blue fainted in the flooding presence of the full white light of
such unblunted day. Here and there, adown his sides, something flashed
out in a clear, intense dazzle, like an enormous crystal cropping from
the granite, and blazing with reflected splendor. These were the leaps
of water from out dark rifts into the sun.

"Everybody will be in the pines to-day," said Martha Josselyn. "I think
it is better when they all go off and leave us."

"We can go up under our rock," said Sue, putting stockings and mending
cotton into a large, light basket. "Have you g