"Virginia Hemingway!" said the store-keeper. "Yes, she’s a regular beauty, and the gentlest, sweetest little trick in seven states. Well, Masters, I’ll be straight with you. It’s this way. You see, she really _is_ full grown, and old enough to receive company, I reckon, but her mother, the old woman I told you about who hates Ann Boyd so thoroughly—well, she doesn’t seem to realize that Virginia is coming on, and so she won’t consent to any of the boys going near her. But old Jane can’t make nature over. Girls will be girls, and if you put too tight a rein on them they will learn to slip the halter, or some chap will teach them to take the bit in their teeth." A man came to Wilson holding a sample of syrup on a piece of wrapping-paper, to which he had applied his tongue. "What’s this here brand worth?" he asked. "Sixty-five—best golden drip," was Wilson’s reply. "Fill your jug yourself; I’ll take your word for it." "All right, you make a ticket of it—jug holds two gallons," said the customer, and he turned away. "Say, Wilson, just a minute," cried the drummer; "do you mean that she—" "Oh, look here now," said the store-keeper. "I don’t mean any reflection against that sweet girl, but it has become a sort of established habit among girls here in the mountains, when their folks hold them down too much, for them to meet fellows on the sly, out walking and the like. Virginia, as I started to say, is full of natural life. She knows she’s pretty, and she wouldn’t be a woman if she didn’t want to be told so—though, to be so good-looking, she is really the most sensible girl I know." "You mean she has her fancies, then," said Masters, in a tone of disappointment. "I don’t say she has." Wilson had an uneasy glance on a group of women bending over some bolts of calico, one of whom was chewing a sample clipped from a piece to see if it would fade. "But—between me and you now—Langdon Chester has for the last three months been laying for her. I see he’s slipped away; I’d bet my hat he saw her just now, and has made a break for some point on the road where he can speak to her." "Chester? Why, the rascal pretended to me just now that he hardly knew her." Wilson smiled knowingly. "That’s his way. He is as sly as they make ’em. His daddy was before him. When it comes to dealing with women who strike their fancy they know exactly what they are doing. But Langdon has struck flint-rock in that little girl. He, no doubt, is flirting with all his might, but she’ll have him on his knees before he’s through with it. A pair of eyes like hers would burn up every mean thought in a man." The drummer sighed, a deep frown on his brow. "You don’t know him as well as I do," he said. "I knew him at college. George, that little trick ought not to be under such a fellow’s influence I’m just a travelling man, but—well—"