“Oh, Jill, is that you? Come help me string these slices. These are our own apples, and mother wants to keep them separate from the rest, so Sally and Ruthy and I are doing them.” “Did your brother Jo pick them?” asked Gillian, sinking down in her peculiar and graceful fashion upon the floor, beside Betty, but not offering to take the needle threaded with coarse flax that Sally held toward her. “Jo and David picked them, you naughty girl, and talked of naught but you while they did it.” “Betty, Betty, here’s Alick Standish coming this way, and don’t you blush; now mind you, Betty, don’t you blush! Fie! but you do! What makes her hate Alick so, Sally?” asked Gillian maliciously. “Who hates Alick?” asked the cheery voice of the good-looking “heir apparent” of Myles Standish, who had obeyed a glance of Gillian’s eyes and joined the group. “Who but the one who colors red as fire with vexation when he draws nigh,” replied the girl coolly; and Standish, curiously regarding the faces of the three, perceived that both Betty’s and Sally’s faces were aflame, while Gillian’s cream-white skin looked cool as a calla lily. “Are you paring the apples I picked, Gillian?” asked another voice as David Alden joined the group. “Nay, for ’twas Satan who first plucked an apple for a woman,” replied Jill, with a mocking little laugh; and Alick whispered in her ear, “There’s ne’er a son of Adam would refuse if you offered him the apple, Gillian.” “What! not if he lost Paradise thereby?” “The paradise of your love would”-- “Oh, Master Pabodie, do come and reason with these terrible blasphemers who are talking of Satan and nobody can tell what else. Say to Master Pabodie what you were saying to me, Alick!” Thus dared, the young man looked half of mind to accept the challenge, but John Pabodie, shrewdly glancing at the audacious girl, replied, “Nay, mistress, I’m twenty years too old and haply twenty years too young to cope with such a matter. But here’s my son William just come home from Boston and farther, and I’ll leave him to fill the place of Paris, if one may quote the old mythologies in a Christian land.” “Surely, when such a Helen rises before one’s eyes,” added a sonorous young voice, as Gillian suddenly stood up, her sinuous and suggestive figure displayed in a gown of creamy mull clinging to every curve, and covering yet not concealing the exquisite roundness of arms and shoulders white with that peculiar _mat_ whiteness never seen save in persons of Latin blood. “Who was Helen?” asked Gillian very slowly, while the velvety darkness of her eyes rested with infantile confidence upon the handsome face of William Pabodie, who, after the pause of an instant, said significantly,-- “The handsomest woman that ever lived.” A little silence ensued, and all eyes turned upon Gillian, who, nothing daunted, softly replied,-- “She must have been well pleased when Paris told her so.”