wondered at the child's unconscious
adaptation of mood to the clothes she happened to be wearing; he
recalled how he had seen her demure and distant in misty, pastel-tinted
party frocks or quaintly, infantilely dignified in soberer Sunday
morning garb. But that Saturday morning he realized what the woman was
to be like, when the hem of the velvet skirt no longer hung high above
spindly black legs and the bobbed hair had been allowed to grow and
grow, far below the tiny ears which it now barely covered.

To Caleb who, without knowing it, from sheer sympathy was viewing her
through the untaught eyes of the boy at his feet, she was no longer a
mere slip of a girl-child, dark-eyed, bewildering of mood and pulsingly
alive. Caleb caught his first illuminating glimpse of the woman she
was to be--of the dainty grace and more than usual beauty which was
there in the promise of the years. And he who was fond of insisting to
his sister Sarah, that there was many a boy back in those hills who,
with his chance, might some day achieve greatness, suddenly realized
how long and weary the road would be for just such a one as the
fascinated little figure on the steps, before he could begin to
approach that level which, to a society that Caleb understood, was
typified by this exquisite, elfin figure, Dexter Allison's daughter.

He was no snob--Caleb Hunter--and yet the little girl's bearing at that
moment doubly accented for him the gulf which lay between her and the
hills-boy, by name Steve. For though she did pause to stare at his
white drill trousers and unbelievable man-sized boots with frankly
childish astonishment, the next instant she had recovered herself and
without another glance preceded her father across the grass. Quite as
though Steve had not been there at all she passed him, to hesitate
demurely at Caleb's side.

"Good morning, Uncle Cal," she greeted him.

And then, quite suddenly, Caleb didn't feel so very sorry after all for
his little visitor. He stopped pitying him. Steve's eyes had not
wavered once from the little girl's face, from the time she appeared in
the hedge gap until she mounted the steps, utterly oblivious to his
nearness; but when she brushed against his elbow, the boy rose and
stood, hat in hand, gravely quiet, gravely possessed, and silently sure
of himself.

Even after he had answered Barbara Allison's greeting and turned with
his grown-up, ponderous courtesy to present the boy to her, only