"And there was a reason for that," she went on. "I was frightened by a mad dog when I was a little girl eight years old. I was going out to spend some of my allowance. I got twenty cents a month and I had it all in pennies. And suddenly there was a great commotion in the street, everybody running and screaming and rushing into doorways. I didn't know what was the matter but I was startled and dropped my pennies. And just as I stooped to pick them up I saw the dog coming toward me, tearing, with its tongue hanging out. And, would you believe it, I gathered up all those pennies before I ran and just had time to scramble over a fence." It was impossible not to laugh, especially with her laughter leading, her eyes narrowed to cracks through which light and humor sparkled at him. He was beginning to know Miss Gillespie--"Miss Susan" he called her--very well. It was just like his dream, riding beside her every day, and growing more friendly, the spell of her youth, and her dark bloom, and her attentive eyes--for she was an admirable listener if her answers sometimes lacked point--drawing from him secret thoughts and hopes and aspirations he had never dared to tell before. If she did not understand him she did not laugh at him, which was enough for David with the sleepy whisperings of the prairie around him, and new, strange matter stirring in his heart and making him bold. There was only one thing about her that was disappointing. He did not admit it to himself but it kept falling on their interviews with a depressive effect. To the call of beauty she remained unmoved. If he drew up his horse to gaze on the wonders of the sunset the waiting made her impatient. He had noticed that heat and mosquitoes would distract her attention from the hazy distances drowsing in the clear yellow of noon. The sky could flush and deepen in majestic splendors, but if she was busy over the fire and her skillets she never raised her head to look. And so it was with poetry. She did not know and did not care anything about the fine frenzies of the masters. Byron?--wrinkling up her forehead--yes, she thought she'd read something in school. Shelley?--"The Ode to the West Wind?" No, she'd never read that. What was an ode anyway? Once he recited the "Lines to an Indian Air," his voice trembling a little, for the words were almost sacred. She pondered for a space and then said: "What are champak odors?" David didn't know. He had never thought of inquiring. "Isn't that odd," she murmured. "That would have been the first thing I would have wanted to know. Champak? I suppose it's some kind of a flower--something like a magnolia. It has a sound like a magnolia." A lively imagination was evidently not one of Miss Gillespie's possessions.