f his childhood, ghosts
in the attic, a banshee of which he had once heard a fearsome story, a
cow that had chased him on the farm. She unconsciously assisted him
from this slough of shame by saying suddenly:

"Oh, yes, I can. I remember now. I'm afraid of mad dogs."

It was not very comforting for, after all, everybody was afraid of mad
dogs.

"And there was a reason for that," she went on. "I was frightened by a
mad dog when I was a little girl eight years old. I was going out to
spend some of my allowance. I got twenty cents a month and I had it
all in pennies. And suddenly there was a great commotion in the
street, everybody running and screaming and rushing into doorways. I
didn't know what was the matter but I was startled and dropped my
pennies. And just as I stooped to pick them up I saw the dog coming
toward me, tearing, with its tongue hanging out. And, would you
believe it, I gathered up all those pennies before I ran and just had
time to scramble over a fence."

It was impossible not to laugh, especially with her laughter leading,
her eyes narrowed to cracks through which light and humor sparkled at
him.

He was beginning to know Miss Gillespie--"Miss Susan" he called
her--very well. It was just like his dream, riding beside her every
day, and growing more friendly, the spell of her youth, and her dark
bloom, and her attentive eyes--for she was an admirable listener if her
answers sometimes lacked point--drawing from him secret thoughts and
hopes and aspirations he had never dared to tell before. If she did
not understand him she did not laugh at him, which was enough for David
with the sleepy whisperings of the prairie around him, and new, strange
matter stirring in his heart and making him bold.

There was only one thing about her that was disappointing. He did not
admit it to himself but it kept falling on their interviews with a
depressive effect. To the call of beauty she remained unmoved. If he
drew up his horse to gaze on the wonders of the sunset the waiting made
her impatient. He had noticed that heat and mosquitoes would distract
her attention from the hazy distances drowsing in the clear yellow of
noon. The sky could flush and deepen in majestic splendors, but if she
was busy over the fire and her skillets she never raised her head to
look. And so it was with poetry. She did not know and did not care
anything about the fine frenzies of the masters. Byron?--wrinkling up