beauty he felt that it stirred his
blood and aroused in him the physical tenderness which he associated
always with some vague chivalrous impulse.

She moved slightly when he dismounted beside her, and a number of
small splotches of black circling around her resolved themselves into a
bodyguard of little negroes, clad in checked pinafores, with the scant
locks wrapped tightly with crimson cotton.

"May I let down the bars for you?" he asked, turning to look into her
face with a smile, "and do you take your collection of piccaninnies
along for protection or for amusement?"

"Grandma doesn't like me to go out alone, sir--so many dreadful things
happen," she answered gently, with an utter absence of humour. "I can't
take anybody who is at work, so I let the little darkies come. Mary Jo
is the oldest and she's only six."

"Is your home near here?"

"I live at the mill. It's a mile farther on, but there is a short cut."

"Then you are related to the miller, Mr. Revercomb--that fine looking
chap I met at the ordinary?"

"He is my uncle. I am Blossom Revercomb," she answered.

"Blossom? It's a pretty name."

Her gaze dwelt on him calmly for and instant, with the faintest quiver
of her full white lids, which appeared to weigh heavily on her rather
prominent eyes of a pale periwinkle blue.

"My real name is Keren-happuch," she said at last, after a struggle with
herself, "grandma bein' a great Scripture reader, chose it when I was
born--but they call me Blossom, for short."

"And am I permitted, Miss Keren-happuch, to call you Blossom?"

Again she hesitated, pondering gravely.

"Mary Jo, if you unwrap your hair your mother will whip you," she
said suddenly, and went on without a perceptible change of tone,
"Keren-happuch is an ugly name, and I don't like it--though grandma says
we oughtn't to think any of the Bible names ugly, not even Gog. She
is quite an authority on Scripture, is grandma, and she can repeat the
first chapter in Chronicles backward, which the minister couldn't do
when he tried."

"I'd like to hear the name that would sound ugly on your lips, Miss
Keren-happuch."

If the sons of farmers had sought to enchant her ears with similar
strains, there was no hint of it in the smiling eyes she lifted to his.
The serenity of her look added, he thought, to her resemblance to some
pagan goddess--not to Artemis nor to Aphrodite, but to some creature
compounded equally of earth and sky. Io perhaps, or Eu