.
"Never!"

He smiled gently. "Look here! I'll send you up some books. You
read--don't you?" She nodded quickly. "Some magazines and papers. Odd I
never thought of it before," he added half musingly. "Come along to the
cabin. And," he stopped again and said decisively, "the next time you
want anything, don't wait for me to come, but write."

A few days after he left she received a package of books,--an odd
collection of novels, magazines, and illustrated journals of the period.
She received them eagerly as an evidence of his concern for her, but it
is to be feared that her youthful nature found little satisfaction in
the gratification of fancy. Many of the people she read of were strange
to her; many of the incidents related seemed to her mere lies; some
tales which treated of people in her own sphere she found profoundly
uninteresting. In one of the cheaper magazines she chanced upon a
fashion plate; she glanced eagerly through all the others for a like
revelation until she got a dozen together, when she promptly relegated
the remaining literature to a corner and oblivion. The text accompanying
the plates was in a jargon not always clear, but her instinct supplied
the rest. She dispatched by Hoskins a note to Doctor Ruysdael: "Please
send me some brite kalikers and things for sewing. You told me to ask."
A few days later brought the response in a good-sized parcel.

Yet this did not keep her from her care of the stock nor her rambles in
the forest; she was quick to utilize her rediscovery of the spring for
watering the cattle; it was not so far afield as the half-dried creek in
the canyon, and was a quiet sylvan spot. She ate her frugal midday meal
there and drank of its waters, and, secure in her seclusion, bathed
there and made her rude toilet when the cows were driven home. But she
did not again look into its mirrored surface when it was tranquil!

And so a month passed. But when Doctor Ruysdael was again due at the
cabin, a letter was brought by Hoskins, with the news that he was called
away on professional business down the coast, and could not come until
two weeks later. In the disappointment that overcame her, she did not at
first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression,
which was really one of undisguised admiration. Never having seen this
before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some
vague "larking" or jocularity, for which she was in no mood.

"Say, Lib