make them decent for riding?"
Looking up at the girl's question, he answered absently, "two lumps.
Cream? Yes, please, a little," and then continued to stare at her with
a vague and impersonal wonder. She was half savage, of course, with red
hands, and bad manners and dressed like a boy that had got into skirts
for a joke--but, by George, there was something about her that bit into
the fancy. Not a beauty like his Europa of the pasture (who was, when
it came to that?)--but a fascinating little beggar, with a quality of
sudden surprises that he could describe by no word except "iridescent."
He liked the high arch of her brows; but her nose wasn't good and her
lips were too thin except when she smiled. When she smiled! It was her
smile, after all, that made her seem a thing of softness and bloom born
to be kissed.

Reuben ate his food rapidly, pouring his coffee into the saucer,
and drinking it in loud gulps that began presently to make Gay feel
decidedly nervous. Once the young man inadvertently glanced toward
him, and turning away the instant afterwards, he found the girl's eyes
watching him with a defiant and threatening look. Her passionate defence
of Reuben reminded Gay of a nesting bird under the eye of the hunter.
She did not plead, she dared--actually dared him to criticise the old
man even in his thoughts!

That Molly herself was half educated and possessed some smattering of
culture, it was easy to see. She was less rustic in her speech than his
Europa, and there was the look of breeding, or of blood, in the fine
poise of her head, in her small shapely hands, which he remembered were
a distinguishing mark of the Gays.

"Mr. Mullen came for you in his cart," said Reuben, glancing from one
to the other of his hearers with his gentle and humble look. "I told him
you must have forgotten as you'd ridden down to the low grounds."

"No, I didn't forget," replied Molly, indifferent apparently to the
restraint of Gay's presence, "I did it on purpose." Meeting the young
man's amused and enquiring expression, she added defiantly, "There are
plenty of girls that are always ready to go with him and it's because
I'm not that he wants me."

"He's not the only one, to judge from what I heard at the ordinary."

She shrugged her shoulders--an odd gesture for a rustic coquette--while
a frown overshadowed her features.

"They're all alike," she retorted scornfully. "If you go over to the
mill you'll probably find Abel Reve