; but you and your mother,
Miss Brooks, I trust, will make up your minds to overlook and forgive a
good deal. I shall do my best to be worthy of Mr. Tap--of my
predecessor--but even then I am afraid you'll find me a great bother."

She raised her shy eyelids. The faintest ghost of a long-buried dimple
came into her pale cheek as she said softly, to his utter consternation:

"Rats!"

Had she uttered an oath he could not have been more startled than he
was by this choice gem of Western saloon-slang from the pure lips of
this Evangeline-like figure before him. He sat gazing at her with a
wild hysteric desire to laugh. She lifted her eyes again, swept him
with a slightly terrified glance, and said:

"Tap says you all say that when any one makes-believe politeness to
you."

"Oh, your BROTHER says that, does he?" said Herbert, laughing.

"Yes, and sometimes 'Old rats.' But," she continued hurriedly, "HE
doesn't say it; he says YOU all do. My brother is very particular, and
very good. Doctor Stout loves him. He is thought very much of in all
Christian circles. That book-mark was given to him by one of his
classes."

Every trace of her dimples had vanished. She looked so sweetly grave,
and withal so maidenly, sitting there slightly smoothing the lengths of
her pink fingers, that Herbert was somewhat embarrassed.

"But I assure you, Miss Brooks, I was not making-believe. I am really
very careless, and everything is so proper--I mean so neat and
pretty--here, that I"--he stopped, and, observing the same backward
wandering of her eye as of a filly about to shy, quickly changed the
subject. "You have, or are about to have, neighbors?" he said,
glancing towards the windows as he recalled the incident of a moment
before.

"Yes; and they're not at all nice people. They are from Pike County,
and very queer. They came across the plains in '50. They say
'Stranger'; the men are vulgar, and the girls very forward. Tap forbids
my ever going to the window and looking at them. They're quite what you
would call 'off color.'"

Herbert, who did not dare to say that he never would have dreamed of
using such an expression in any young girl's presence, was plunged in
silent consternation.

"Then your brother doesn't approve of them?" he said, at last,
awkwardly.

"Oh, not at all. He even talked of having ground-glass put in all
these windows, only it would make the light bad."

Herbert felt very embarrassed. If th