"Sure--but what is that?" The rider had caught sight of the picture. "Did you make that?" "Yes; I painted it." "My!" She dismounted, and with arm through bridle, she and the horse came up for a closer view of the picture. The girl looked at it mutely for a moment. "It's pretty" she said; "I wish I could make a picture like that." Mildred smiled at her. She was such a round, rosy girl, so full of health and life and color. Not such a little girl either, now a nearer view was obtained. She was only a year or two younger than Mildred herself. "I wish I could do what you can," said the painter of pictures. "I--what? I can't do anything like that." "No; but you can ride a horse, and stop runaway cows. You can do a lot of things that I cannot do because you are stronger than I am. I wish I had some of that rosy red in your cheeks." "You can have some of mine," laughed the other, "for I have more than enough; but you wouldn't like the freckles." "I wouldn't mind them, I'm sure; but let me thank you for what you did, and let's get acquainted." Mildred held out her hand, which the other took somewhat shyly. "Don't you have to go home with your cows?" "Yes, I guess so." "Then we'll go back together." She gathered her material and they walked on up the path, Mildred ahead, for she was timid of the horse which the other led by the bridle rein. At the bars in the corner of the upper pasture the horse was turned loose into his own feeding ground, and the girls went on together. "You live near here, don't you?" inquired Mildred. "Yes, just over there." "Oh, are you Carlia Duke?" "Yes; how did you know?" "Dorian has told me about you." "Has he? We're neighbors; an' you're the girl that's visiting with the Trent's?" "Yes." "Well, I'm glad to meet you. Dorian has told me about you, too." Thus these two, meeting for the first time, went on chatting together; and thus Dorian saw them. He had missed Mildred at the lower pasture, and so, with shovel again on shoulder, he had followed up the homeward path. The girls were some distance ahead, so he did not try to overtake them. In fact, he slackened his pace a little, so as not to get too close to them to disturb them; but he saw them plainly walk close together up the road in the twilight of the summer evening, the tall, light-haired Mildred, and the shorter, dark-haired Carlia; and the child in Dorian seemed to vanish, and the man in him asserted himself in thought and feelings which it would have been hard for him to describe in words. CHAPTER FOUR. Indian summer lay drowsily over the land. It had come late that season, but its rare beauty compensated for its tardiness. Its golden mellowness permeating the hazy air, had also, it seems, crept into the heart of Dorian Trent. The light coating of frost which each morning lay on the grass, had by noon vanished, and now the earth was warm and dry.