leaning
on the arm of Bradley, crossed the hall, and for the first time entered
the dining-room of the house where he had lodged for three weeks. It
was a bright, cheerful apartment, giving upon the laurels of the rocky
hillside, and permeated, like the rest of the house, with the wholesome
spice of the valley--an odor that, in its pure desiccating property,
seemed to obliterate all flavor of alien human habitation, and even to
dominate and etherealize the appetizing smell of the viands before
them. The bare, shining, planed, boarded walls appeared to resent any
decoration that might have savored of dust, decay, or moisture. The four
large windows and long, open door, set in scanty strips of the plainest
spotless muslin, framed in themselves pictures of woods and rock and sky
of limitless depth, color, and distance, that made all other adornment
impertinent. Nature, invading the room at every opening, had banished
Art from those neutral walls.

"It's like a picnic, with comfort," said Mainwaring, glancing round him
with boyish appreciation. Miss Minty was not yet there; the Chinaman
was alone in attendance. Mainwaring could not help whispering, half
mischievously, to Louise, "You draw the line at Chinamen, I suppose?"

"WE don't, but HE does," answered the young girl. "He considers us his
social inferiors. But--hush!"

Minty Sharpe had just entered the room, and was advancing with smiling
confidence towards the table. Mainwaring was a little startled; he had
seen Minty in a holland sun-bonnet and turned up skirt crossing
the veranda, only a moment before; in the brief instant between the
dishing-up of dinner and its actual announcement she had managed to
change her dress, put on a clean collar, cuffs, and a large jet brooch,
and apply some odorous unguent to her rebellious hair. Her face,
guiltless of powder or cold cream, was still shining with the healthy
perspiration of her last labors as she promptly took the vacant chair
beside Mainwaring.

"Don't mind me, folks," she said cheerfully, resting her plump elbow on
the table, and addressing the company generally, but gazing with frank
curiosity into the face of the young man at her side. "It was a keen
jump, I tell yer, to get out of my old duds inter these, and look
decent inside o' five minutes. But I reckon I ain't kept yer waitin'
long--least of all this yer sick stranger. But you're looking pearter
than you did. You're wonderin' like ez not where I ever saw ye