“I don't see how that would make things any better,” he said. “Better wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your nose in my strawberry bed.” She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her face, and said: “I suppose it looks dreadful.” “Like a pig's,” he returned cheerfully. She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate. He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang. That beautiful brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back. She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it was still smaller. “You used to ride astride,” he said, a flood of recollection coming over him, “and it's much safer with your temper and that brute.” “And you,” she said in a lower voice, “used to be”--But the rest of her sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse, but he thought the word was “kinder.” Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, he went back to the garden, and from the bruised and trampled strawberry bed gathered a small basket of the finest fruit, covered them with leaves, added a paper with the highly ingenious witticism, “Picked up with you,” and sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible entry moved Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman to the settlement, to reminiscences: “Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. Ole man allee time make chin music to Missy. Allee time jaw jaw--allee time make lows--allee time cuttee up Missy! Plenty time lockee up Missy topside house; no can walkee--no can talkee--no hab got--how can get?--must washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go dead--Missy all lightee now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown first-chop man.” Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testimony, for once, corroborated by the Christian neighbors.