weeds, as though it were less a
drudgery than a live interest which it was well to meet joyously. After
a moment she walked a few steps to another row of tiny beans. Her
movements had the perfect grace of muscular control; one melted, flowed,
into the other. Bob's eye of the athlete noted and appreciated this
fact. He wondered to which of the mountain clans this girl belonged.
Vigorous and breezy as were the maidens of the hills, able to care for
themselves, like the paladins of old, afoot or ahorse, they lacked this
grace of movement. He stepped forward.

"I beg pardon," said he.

The girl turned, resting the heel of her hoe on the earth, and both
hands on the end of its handle. Bob saw a dark, oval countenance, with
very red cheeks, very black eyes and hair, and an engaging flash of
teeth. The eyes looked at him as frankly as a boy's, and the flash of
teeth made him unaffectedly welcome.

"Is Mr. Thorne here?" asked Bob.

"Why, no," replied the girl; "but I'm Mr. Thorne's sister. Won't I do?"

She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin
gauntlets from her hands. Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her
of the implement.

"Do?" he echoed. "Why, of course you'll do!"

She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great
amusement.

"Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?" she asked.

"No," replied Bob; "just ran over to see him."

She laughed quietly.

"Then I'm afraid I won't do," she said, "for I must cook dinner. You
see," she explained, "I'm Mr. Thorne's clerk, and if it were business, I
might attend to it."

Bob flushed to the ears. He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient
self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting.
She surveyed his embarrassment with approving eyes.

"You might finish those beans," said she, offering the hoe. "Of course,
you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire."

Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went
around to the front. There he stopped in astonishment.

"Well, you have changed things!" he cried.

The stuffy little shed kitchen was no longer occupied. A floor had been
laid between the bases of four huge trees, and walls enclosing three
sides to the height of about eight feet had been erected. The affair had
no roof. Inside these three walls were the stove, the kitchen table, the
shelves and utensils of cooking. Miss Thorne, her sunbonnet laid aside
fro