come back from your
ride and have breakfast with us."

Norman groaned, then said with a vigorous nod of the head, since his
hands were too busy with the skein for gestures, "Well, have him if you
want to, but I'll give you fair warning, Mary Ware, if you go to getting
off any of your Uncle Jerry remarks on me for his benefit, I'll let the
cat right out of the bag."

Mary replied with a grimace so much like his own, that it brought on a
contest in which the yarn winding was laid aside for a time, while they
stood before a mirror, each trying to outdo the other in making
grotesque faces.

Two mornings after that, in Joyce's khaki riding-suit and the new red
Tam-O'-Shanter, Mary swung into the saddle while Pink held both horses,
and they were off for an early gallop in the frosty October dawn. The
crisp, tingling air of the mountains brought such color into Mary's
face, and such buoyancy into her spirits that Pink watched her as he
would have watched some rare kind of a bird, skimming along beside him.
He had never known such a girl. There was not a particle of coquetry in
her attitude towards him. She didn't glance up with pretty appealing
side-glances as Sara Downs did, or say little personal things which
naturally called for compliments in reply. She was like a boy in her
straightforward plain dealing with him, her joking banter, her keen
interest in the mountain life and her knowledge of wood lore. One never
knew which way her quick-winged thoughts might dart. As they rode on he
began to feel as if he was thoroughly awake for the first time in his
life.

Up to this time he had been fairly well satisfied with himself. A small
inheritance safely invested and his one year at college had given him
the prestige of a person of both wealth and education in the little town
where he had lived until recently. Yet there was Jack, who had not even
finished a High School course, and Mary, who had had less than a year at
Warwick Hall, on such amazing terms of intimacy with a world outside of
his ken, that he felt illiterate and untutored beside them. Even Norman
seemed to have a wider horizon than himself, and he wondered what made
the difference.

He divined the reason afterward when they came back from their ride and
sat at breakfast in the sunny dining-room. It was Mrs. Ware who had
lifted their life out of the ordinary by the force of her rare
personality. Through all their poverty and trouble and hard times she
had kept