r?"

"I ain't sayin' much," said Madge, "because she's different from me, has
had more chance, is better dressed, knows more from books an' so on, an'
it might seem like I was plumb jealous of her. Maybe I am, too. But,
dellaw! Her with her pollysol! When she opened it that way at me I
thought it war a gun an' she war goin' to fire! Maybe I ain't had no
learnin' in politeness, but it seems to me I would a been a little more
so, just the same, if I'd been in her place. She don't like me, she
don't, an' I--why, I just _hates_ her! Her with her ombril up, an' not a
cloud in sight!"

Layson looked at her and laughed. The letter in his pocket made it seem
probable that she would not need, in future, to submit to such
humiliations as the bluegrass girl had put upon her, so his merriment
could not be counted cruel.

"Jealous of her?" he inquired, quizzically.

She sat in deep thought for a moment and then frankly said: "I reckon
so; a leetle, teeny mite. Maybe it has made me mean in thinkin' of her,
ever since."

"You're honest, anyway," said he, "and I shall tell you something that
will comfort you. She was as jealous of you as you were of her."

"_She_ was!" the girl exclaimed, incredulous, surprised. "Of _me_?"
You're crazy, ain't you?"

"Not a bit."

"What have _I_ got to make _her_ jealous?"

"A lot of things. You've beauty such as hers will never be--"

"Dellaw!" said Madge, incredulously. She had no knowledge of her own
attractiveness. "Don't you start in makin' fun o' me."

"I'm not making fun of you. You're very beautiful--my aunt said so, the
Colonel said so, and _I've_ known it, all along."

No one had ever said a thing like this to her, before. She looked keenly
at him, weighing his sincerity. When she finally decided that he really
meant what he had said, she breathed a long sigh of delight.

"They said that I--was _beautiful_!"

"They did, and, little girl, you are; and you have more than beauty. You
have health and strength such as a bluegrass girl has never had in all
the history of women."

"Oh, yes," said she, "I'm strong an' well--but--but--"

"But what?"

"But what?" she quoted bitterly. "But I ain't got no eddication. What
does strength and what does what you tell me is my beauty count, when I
ain't got no eddication? Why--why--I looked plumb _foolish_ by the side
of her! You think I don't know that my talk sounds rough as rocks
alongside hers, ripplin' from her lips as smooth as wate