she thought how uncouth he was, for
in Florence's eye Noble Dill was truly rare, exquisite, and unfamiliar;
and she believed that he was obs, too, whatever that meant. She often
thought about him, and no longer ago than yesterday she had told Kitty
Silver that she couldn't see "how Aunt Julia could _look_ at anybody
else!"

Florence's selection of Noble Dill for the bright favourite of her
dreams was one of her own mysteries. Noble was not beautiful, neither
did he present to the ordinary eye of man anything especially rare,
exquisite, unfamiliar, or even so distinguished as to be obsolete. He
was about twenty-two, but not one of those book-read sportsmen of that
age, confident in clothes and manner, easy travellers and debonair;
that is to say, Noble was not of the worldly type twenty-two. True, he
had graduated from the High-school before entering his father's Real
Estate and Insurance office, but his geographical experiences (in
particular) had been limited to three or four railway excursions, at
special rates, to such points of interest as Mammoth Cave and Petoskey,
Michigan. His other experiences were not more sparkling, and except for
the emotions within him, he was in all the qualities of his mind as well
as in his bodily contours and the apparel sheltering the latter, the
most commonplace person in Florence's visible world. The inner areas of
the first and second fingers of his left hand bore cigarette stains,
seemingly indelible: the first and second fingers of his right hand were
strongly ornamented in a like manner; tokens proving him ambidextrous to
but a limited extent, however. Moreover, his garments and garnitures
were not comparable to those of either Newland Sanders or that dapper
antique, Mr. Ridgely. Noble's straw hat might have brightened under the
treatment of lemon juice or other restorative; his scarf was folded to
hide a spot that worked steadily toward a complete visibility, and some
recent efforts upon his trousers with a tepid iron, in his bedchamber
at home, counteracted but feebly that tendency of cloth to sculpture
itself in hummocks upon repeated pressure of the human knee.

All in all, nothing except the expression of Noble's face and the
somewhat ill-chosen pansy in his buttonhole hinted of the remarkable.
Yet even here was a thing for which he was not responsible himself; it
was altogether the work of Julia. What her work was, in the case of
Noble Dill, may be expressed in a word--a w