enderson laughed aloud.

"But don't you see, that wasn't it at all. They were all breathless
with admiration. You had the things they would have given all their
jewels for--things they can't buy."

For a little space she looked at him with serious, pained eyes,
suspicious of ridicule, then the expression altered to bewilderment,
and her question came in a lowered voice.

"Things I hev thet they lacks? What manner of things air them--I
mean----those?"

"The very rare gifts of originality and an elfin personality," he
assured her. "Besides that you have beauty of the freshest and most
colorful sort."

For a moment Blossom flushed again shyly, then she lifted one hand and
pointed across the road.

"See thet white flower? Thet's wild parsely. I always calls it the pore
relation to the elder bush--but it's jest got to stay a pore
relation--always--because it started out thet way."

Henderson, as the summer progressed, discovered an absurd thought
lurking in his mind with annoying pertinacity. He could not for long
banish the fanciful picture of Blossom Fulkerson transplanted--of
Blossom as she might be with fuller opportunities for development.
There is an undeniable fascination in building air-castles about the
Cinderella theme of human transformations and the sight of her always
teased his imagination into play.

That these fantasies bore any personal relation to himself he did not
admit or even suspect. Readily enough, and satisfactorily enough he
explained to himself that he, who was accustomed to a life of teeming
activities, was here marooned in monotony. All things are measurable by
contrasts, and in her little world, Blossom stood out radiantly and
exquisitely different from her colorless sisters. When he had crossed
Cedar Mountain again and boarded a railroad train, more vital things
would engage him, and he would promptly forget the beautiful little
barbarian.

One hot afternoon in late July Jerry Henderson sat in the lounging-room
of his club in Louisville. The windows were open and the street noises,
after the still whispers of the mountains, seemed to beat on his senses
with discordant insistence. Down the length of the broad, wainscoted
hall he saw a party of young men in flannels and girls in soft muslins
passing out and he growled testily.

"All cut to a single pattern!" he exclaimed. "All impeccably
monotonous!" Then he irrelevantly added to himself, "I'm allowing
myself to become absurd--I exp