he thought; but her eyes opened as he
would have passed her seat. She had replaced the toque with a brown cap
he knew, and as she smiled up at him she seemed again almost the
familiar godmother of his fairy tale. He passed on, however, after a
meaningless word or two and, sprawling in another section, surrendered
himself to the troubled pretentiousness of the Pullman school of
decoration.

He had left the lady grateful for his going. She was in no mood for that
artless lyric chant of youth in which he was so adept. Her brother that
morning had accused her of waning enthusiasm for her protege.

"I believe you're funking, Nell," he had said shrewdly. "You're
discovering that mountain slumming is different from the city kind."

But she had protested that no discerning person of ordinary humanity
could have done less for the prisoned youth. "Of course"--and she had
sighed--"he's a mere bundle of untried eagerness, and we're responsible,
in a way, for Heaven knows what, but we had to do it, didn't we?"

"Not 'we' had to! _You_ had to. It's all yours, Nell--the credit and the
glory and all the rest. I prefer to get up my own responsibilities, if
you don't mind."

"But you agreed with me--you _did_--you advised when I asked you--it's
perfectly plain--you said, 'Of course!'"--But the train moved off in the
midst of his laugh at this, and he had doffed his hat to her with a
mocking gesture of freehanded relinquishment.

Now, as she closed her eyes again, her memory dived for some fairy tale
or fragment of mythology in which an unsuspecting humanitarian rescued
an insignificant woods thing, only to have it change on the instant into
a creature troublesome in more ways than one. She was certain some
primitive fabulist had foreseen this complication, but her mind was
weary and shadowed, and the historic solution evaded her. "Mountain
slumming" was truly more exigent than the town sort.

But this reflection aroused a defensive sympathy. The vision of
Ewing as he had passed glowed before her shut eyes, the active,
square-shouldered, slender figure, garbed in a decently fitting
suit of gray (she was glad to remember that), the quick eyes, ardent
for life, the thinned, brown face, the usual buoyance held down to an
easy self-possession that was new to her, the wild, reliant expectancy
of a boy tempered all at once by some heritage of insight. Outwardly,
at least, he would fit his new life. So reflecting, she dozed on the
look