Sitting down upon the seat she had vacated, he looked at her very closely, deciding that she was not like Clarice and the other girls of his world,—fashionable girls, delicately reared, with no wish ungratified. Her dress was poor and old-fashioned, and her hands, from which she had drawn her gloves, were brown with traces of hard work upon them; nor did she, in her present state, with her eyes shut and the haggard look in her tired face, impress him as very pretty. She was too crumpled and jaded for that, but, as if a breath from the future were wafted backward to the present, hinting vaguely of all that she was to dare and suffer for him, he felt strangely drawn towards her. For a few moments she seemed to sleep, and when the boat changed its course a little and the sun shone upon her face he stood up and shielded her from it, and brushed a fly from her head, and thought how soft and fluffy was her golden brown hair, more golden than brown in the sunlight. A sudden roll of the boat aroused her, and, starting up, she flashed upon him a look and smile so bright that he changed his mind with regard to her beauty. “By Jove, she has handsome eyes, though, and a mouth which makes a feller’s water when she smiles,” he thought, as he asked if she were better. They were not far from the Basin, where he told her they were to stop and take on the passengers who came by train from Boston. Then he began to talk of Oak City, which she was sure to like. “Not a great many swell people of the fast sort go there,” he said. “They have a fancy that it is too slow and religious, with two camp meetings there every year, but I don’t think so. I like the camp meetings. The residents are fine people, and its visitors are highly respectable,—some of the very best old families, like,——” He was going to say “the Ralstons,” but checked himself, and added instead, “Judges and Governors and professors. Fast people don’t go there much, such as Jack Percy and his crowd.” Elithe had never heard of Jack Percy. Neither he nor his crowd interested her as much as the highly respectable set to which Paul evidently belonged. “Is my aunt a swell woman?” she asked. Paul could scarcely repress a smile, as he thought of Miss Hansford, but he answered, very gravely: “Not exactly a swell, but has oceans of blue blood in her veins, dating back to the Mayflower, and Miles Standish and Oliver Cromwell, and the Duke of Argyle, and the Lord knows who else,—fairly swims in it.” “Oh-h!” Elithe gasped, with a feeling as if she were drowning in all this blue blood, some of which must belong to her, as she was a Hansford. “Tell me about her. I never saw her. Do you think she will like me?” she said, and Paul replied: “Like you? Yes, of course, she will, and you will like her. I do. We are great friends.” Then he began to speak of his own family, who spent nearly every summer at Oak City.