; be my model! Let me put you in my pictures. I'll pay
you well, and if I sell the pictures, you'll have a kind of fame to
offer your Cap'n Daddy that no girl need be ashamed of. Have you caught
my meaning?"

"You mean, if I sit here upon the Hills--"

"Sit, stand, or lie among them," Thornly explained.

"You'll paint me, and pay me, and then take your pictures to the city
and sell them?"

"Try to," Thornly laughed easily. "I'm one of the few fortunate devils
who has sold a picture or two. My hopes for the future are good."

"I'll do it!" cried Janet. "It's about the easiest way to get the
boarders' money I've heard of yet!" The laugh that rang out made Thornly
stare.

"I did not know any one could laugh in quite that way," he said. "It
sounded--well, it sounded like part of the air and place. Miss
Janet,"--he spoke slower, feeling his way as he went,--"I'm going to ask
you to keep this business arrangement private. The other artists would
be quick enough to filch my prize if they could."

"No one else shall paint me," Janet assured him. "If I see a little
wagon, I'll pull down my bonnet."

"Thank you. And those on your side, too, Miss Janet! Your Cap'n Daddy,
and that Captain of the Light, I'd like to surprise them by and by. Is
it a go?"

"Oh! yes!" The frank innocence in the girl's face again stirred Thornly.
"It's a go, if my watchers do not interfere."

"Your watchers?"

"Yes. I'm considered rather a--well, something like a ship that's likely
to be wrecked. I don't know why folks are always thinking I may go on
the bar, but they do. And several of them have an eye on me. I can
almost feel Daddy's eye way over from the Station; and there's Davy! I
shouldn't wonder now, if he were looking at me as he hauls the oil up to
the lamp; and Susan Jane, chair-ridden as she is, has eyes that go out
like a devilfish's feelers; and then there is Mark Tapkins! I'm afraid
you'll have trouble with Mark's eyes!"

Thornly was laughing uproariously. "You open a vista of human
possibilities that makes me about crazy," he said. "Your associates must
all be Arguses; but I like not Mark! Just where does Tapkins come in?"

"'Most everywhere!" Janet joined in the care-free laugh. She felt
perfectly at her ease with this stranger now. Born and reared where
equality and good-fellowship existed, she knew no need of caution. To
dislike a person was the only ground for suspicion. To like him was an
open sesame to heart and conf