elieve we've got any. I guess it's all
grass."

"I wish you could see our country out there, once."

"Is it nice?"

"Nice? We're right in the centre of the state, measuring from north to
south, on the old National Road." Clementina had never heard of this
road, but she did not say so. "About five miles back from the Ohio River,
where the coal comes up out of the ground, because there's so much of it
there's no room for it below. Our farm's in a valley, along a creek
bottom, what you Yankees call an intervals; we've got three hundred
acres. My grandfather took up the land, and then he went back to
Pennsylvania to get the girl he'd left there--we were Pennsylvania Dutch;
that's where I got my romantic name--they drove all the way out to Ohio
again in his buggy, and when he came in sight of our valley with his
bride, he stood up in his buggy and pointed with his whip. 'There! As far
as the sky is blue, it's all ours!'"

Clementina owned the charm of his story as he seemed to expect, but when
he said, "Yes, I want you to see that country, some day," she answered
cautiously.

"It must be lovely. But I don't expect to go West, eva."

"I like your Eastern way of saying everr," said Hinkle, and he said it in
his Western way. "I like New England folks."

Clementina smiled discreetly. "They have their faults like everybody
else, I presume."

"Ah, that's a regular Yankee word: presume," said Hinkle. "Our teacher,
my first one, always said presume. She was from your State, too."

XXIX.

In the time of provisional quiet that followed for Clementina, she was
held from the remorses and misgivings that had troubled her before Hinkle
came. She still thought that she had let Dr. Welwright go away believing
that she had not cared enough for the offer which had surprised her so
much, and she blamed herself for not telling him how doubly bound she was
to Gregory; though when she tried to put her sense of this in words to
herself she could not make out that she was any more bound to him than
she had been before they met in Florence, unless she wished to be so. Yet
somehow in this time of respite, neither the regret for Dr. Welwright nor
the question of Gregory persisted very strongly, and there were whole
days when she realized before she slept that she had not thought of
either.

She was in full favor again with Mrs. Lander, whom there was no one to
embitter in her jealous affection. Hinkle formed their whole social
wor