"It is just so with nearly all these people," exclaimed Miss Gill in high scorn. "They have no idea of what life should be--no ambition, and scarcely a soul to divide around among them all. It smothers me!" She threw her arms out impetuously. "I want such different things--the society of the cultivated, the stimulus of great natures. Maybe I could write something that would get before the public then." "Have you ever sent anything East?" he inquired with a Hoosier's vast respect for older civilization. "Yes," she answered with a falling inflection of voice and head. "But it's no use: I never shall amount to anything with my surroundings." The water gurgled over its boulders and the green landscape sent up an exquisite loamy breath. The young people, both representing the afflatus of the State, met in one tragic look which ended in a smile. Next morning Mallston took his usual post in the car, shifting from one bare foot to the other, while the photographer lounged on his locker waiting for custom. The native frequently parted his shaggy jaws, but considered how he should offer his information. He watched his employer with real attachment, and his dark red face deepened its hue around the eyes as he broke out, "We've got a little feller t' 'r house." "What! not another one?" "He's two month ole," explained Mallston. "Oh, your youngest. Why, yes, I've seen him." Mallston was evidently surprised that so humble a creature as his youngest had attracted the great photographer's notice. "He's a fine youngster," added the latter. Mallston was then emboldened to blurt out, "We've named him." "You have? Well, what do you call him?" "We called him after you." "Why, here's an honor! How did you come to name him for me?" "_I_ done it." "Let me see: what can I do for him? Suppose you bring him over now while we aren't very busy and I'll take his picture." Mallston grinned with pleasure: "My woman wanted his picter. My woman 'lowed mebby you wouldn't charge for it if you knowed he was a namesake." "Certainly I won't. So bring him right along and we'll do our best for him." It was some time before he reappeared, carrying his youngest in his arms, its cheeks polished and its wet hair turning over in rings, decked in its chief finery, a blue quilted cloak. The mother came along to hold her cherub in her lap. She was a long, raw-boned woman, immature in face under all her crust of care and tan, evidently distressed in her free waist by the tightness of her calico dress and in her unfenced feet by shoes. "What are you going to do with the baby?" inquired Miss Gill kindly as she encountered this group at right angles on her return from the post-office. "Garn with him to the man to git his picter. Come in and see him took," invited Mrs. Mallston timidly. The young woman, ready to seize on any distraction, went in, scarcely understanding that her bruised ambition reached for healing to such homely, lowly natures as these.