“Look there! Look there!” he cried. “Did you ever see such hedges?” They ran through the trees, then along beside the great hedge as far as the gateway. “Why, the gates are open, ain’t they, Jim?” “Say, they are! Now what do you think of that? Zalie, there’s smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney—and the grass is cut. And, look there, a man is painting the house.” “There’s folks living there, Jim. Maybe it’s ghosts—like I said.” “No it ain’t. I smell the paint. And that’s old man Hendricks doing that painting. It wouldn’t be right to holler to him, would it, Azalea?” “The folks might hear you. It’s queer pa didn’t know folks had moved in.” “Well, pa ain’t been to town for three weeks, and anyway, he might not come on anybody that would tell him. Lots of rich folks comes to Lee now. They come down there because they think it’s pretty. That don’t seem much of a reason for coming to a place, does it?” “Well, I reckon that’s why your pa and ma stopped away up on Tennyson mountain, Jim. It ain’t no way convenient to anything—just way off by itself. If it wasn’t that they stopped on account of prettiness, what was it?” “Pshaw! Pa wouldn’t stop nowhere for prettiness.” “I’ll bet he would! I’ll just bet he would.” “I guess I know pa better than you do, Zalie. I’ve known him years, and you’ve known him weeks.” “It ain’t the length of time you know a person that counts, Jim. It’s the looking in at their hearts and the understanding of them.” “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? Knowing my pa better than I know him!” “Oh, Jim, see! A girl!” Their little pretense at quarreling—for it was only a pretense—was stopped by the appearance of a little girl on the portico of the great house. She looked quite small to them at first, standing among the great pillars that ran up the front of the house, but as she walked on down the old brick walk toward the gateway, they saw that she was almost as tall as Azalea, and quite a little heavier. She was all russet brown—hair, eyes, frock, stockings and shoes, and in her arms she carried a little silky dog with long ears and wistful, bulging eyes. “We ought to go away,” whispered Azalea. “We’ve no business to stand staring in at other folks’s yards like this. It ain’t polite.” But though she said this, she did not move an inch, and as for Jim, he stood with his mouth open, watching that girl dance down the long brick walk between the box hedges. Suddenly she saw the children and stopped. Her eyes rested on Jim a moment and she seemed to smile at his kind, freckled, jolly phiz. Then she saw Azalea and the look in her face changed to one of deeper interest. Azalea, standing slender and straight there in her clean blue frock, with her gray eyes shining and her long hair beautifully braided, certainly was good to look at. So the girl came on, not dancing now, but hastening along as if bent on business. “How do you do?” she said sweetly, blushing a little with shyness.