Physically as well as mentally, Miss Crabb was in strong contrast with the rest of the company; her voice, too, her pronunciation, her method of intonation, and, indeed, all the salients of her personality, cut with an almost barbaric _eclat_ through this smooth social atmosphere. At every turn she made herself felt as a foreign quantity. She was obviously busy; she had a purpose, an ulterior object; she was plying a trade, and a trade, by the way, of which she was very proud. So nearly as words may express it, she was pleasingly disagreeable. Her companions were aware that she aroused in them a dual sentiment wherein pity was scarcely separated from a low grade of admiration. That she was a novice in newspaper work could be detected by the most unskillful observer, and like all novices, she was an enthusiast. Evidently she regarded gathering notes as the chief purpose of life for which she would make any sacrifice. She was nervous and fussy, quick, keen, ready, anxious to make every thing serve her a turn. Hearing the gentlemen discussing the interesting features of the morning's sport, she plied them with such a volley of questions as taxed their agility to answer. Meantime her pencil danced recklessly over the pages of the little red book. The prospect of doing something unique intoxicated her and made her enunciation still more rapid. Reynolds' shooting and the splendid achievement of his dog were to be the chief points of her report and she spared no pains to get the details in full. She looked upon men and men's doings as of much more importance and interest than women and women's acts; she was not quite sure that even dogs were not rated by the world as rather more noticeable than women. Secretly she harbored an ambition to show the world what a woman could do if once she had got clear of the meshes of feminine restraints. Why shouldn't she report a quail-shoot just as well as a man? At all events, she was bound to try, and so she went nimbly at the task. "It's unusual, isn't it?" she inquired of Mr. Tom Boardman, a merry youth just graduated from a Tennessee college, and brim full of sport-lingo, "It's unusual, isn't it, for a dog to stiffen in the air on a point with a bird in its mouth?" She said this all so glibly and earnestly, with a slight sideways turn of her head, that the youth came near choking over his effort to smother a wild laugh. "Very unusual," he answered in a suffering tone, "very." She made some rapid notes in the red book. Then looking up, with the end of the pencil against her teeth, said: "And he struck the ground, stanch on his nose, at a half-turn; is that right?" Mr. Tom Boardman's eyes suddenly widened and then his nerve failed him. He laughed uproariously in spite of himself; but to his great relief Miss Crabb did not take offense. She joined him quite heartily in his merriment at her own expense.