s of chocolates and a huge case of books of all kinds.

"Never," she said to Rita, "did I ever hear of such an angel as Louis
Neville. When he comes the first of August I wish you to keep tight hold
of me, because, if he flees my demonstrations, I feel quite equal to
running him down."

But, curiously enough, it was a rather silent and subdued young girl in
white who offered Neville a shy and sun-tanned hand as he descended from
the train and came forward, straw hat under one arm, to greet her.

"How well you look!" he exclaimed, laughingly; "I never saw such a
flawless specimen of healthy perfection!"

[Illustration: "'How well you look!' he exclaimed"]

"Oh, I know I look like a milk-maid, Kelly; I've behaved like one, too.
Did you ever see such a skin? Do you suppose this sun-burn will ever
come off?"

"Instead of snow and roses you're strawberries and cream," he
said--"and it's just as fetching, Valerie. How are you, anyway?"

"Barely able to sit up and take nourishment," she admitted, demurely.
"... I don't think you look particularly vigorous," she added, more
seriously. "You are brown but thin."

"Thin as a scorched pancake," he nodded. "The ocean was like a vast
plate of clam soup in which I simmered several times a day until I've
become as leathery and attenuated as a punctured pod of kelp.... Where's
the rig we depart in, Valerie?" he concluded, looking around the
sun-scorched, wooden platform with smiling interest.

"I drove down to meet you in a buck-board."

"Splendid! Is there room for my suit case?"

"Plenty. I brought yards of rope."

They walked to the rear of the station where buckboard and horse stood
tethered to a tree. He fastened his suit case to the rear of the
vehicle, swathing it securely in, fathoms of rope; she sprang in, he
followed; but she begged him to let her drive, and pulled on a pair of
weather-faded gloves with a business-like air which was enchanting.

So he yielded seat and rusty reins to her; whip in hand, she steered the
fat horse through the wilderness of arriving and departing carriages of
every rural style and description--stages, surreys, mountain-waggons,
buck-boards--drove across the railroad track, and turned up a mountain
road--a gradual ascent bordered heavily by blackberry, raspberry,
thimble berry and wild grape, and flanked by young growths of beech and
maple set here and there with hemlock and white pine. But the
characteristic foliage was laurel and rh