The skipper, a stalwart young fellow, too handsome by half, came briskly ashore and did his errand, and while the old servant went for the milk, stood with Ruth by the open door asking idle questions, to which she replied without either shyness or boldness. His eyes were just on a level with hers as she stood on the threshold above him, and their bold, merry glance saw with full appreciation how clear were her sherry-brown orbs. He removed his cap and leaned against the door-post, letting his glance stray over the landscape. Here and there upon the brown surface his keen eye detected the flame of a scarlet leaf amid the prevailing russet, but the combined effect of all the red leaves upon the plain could not warm the sombre wastes. "Don't you get tired of the sameness?" he asked suddenly, as if the monotony all at once seemed to him too great to be borne. "Oh, no," Ruth answered, smiling faintly, "I like it." He brushed back his curly, golden locks with a shapely brown hand, and regarded her more closely. "It is like a fish in the water," was his conclusion when he spoke again. "It would drown me." Ruth smiled again, showing her white, even teeth a little, although she did not in the least understand what he meant; and before the conversation could go further Bethiah appeared with the milk she had been getting. Ruth put aside the stranger's offer of pay, and with an instinct of hospitality which must have been genuine indeed to have survived so long disuse from lack of opportunity, she stepped down into the little garden-plot and picked a nosegay of the old-fashioned flowers which in the southern exposure were still unharmed by frost. "Put a posy in my button-hole," he requested lightly, when she gave them to him. "Pick out the prettiest." She had never stuck a flower in a man's coat, but she was too utterly devoid of self-consciousness to be shy. She selected a beautiful clove pink, and smiling her grave smile, thrust the stem through the buttonhole of his yachting-jacket as he held out the lapel. "It would be just the color of your cheeks," he said, "if it could only get sunburned." A redder glow flushed up at his words, and so tempting was the innocent face before him that half involuntarily he bent forward to kiss the smooth lips. The girl drew back, in that grave, unemotional fashion of hers which was to the stranger so unaccountable at once and so fascinating, and he failed of his intent. "Ah, well," he said, in nowise disconcerted, "keep the kiss for your sweetheart, but thank you for the flowers." He laughed with a gleeful, deep-toned note, and turned down the faintly-defined path to the shore again.