As he told her of his trip up the valley and the effect it made upon him, and how he had never dreamed of anything so beautiful, and how good the Pollards were; and what he had painted and what he expected to paint; talking all the time with his thumb circling about as if it was a bit of charcoal and the air it swept through but a sheet of Whatman's best, her critical eye roamed over his figure and costume. She had caught in her first swift, comprehensive glance from over the bridge-rail, the loose jacket and broad-brimmed planter's hat, around which, with his love of color, Oliver had twisted a spray of nasturtium blossoms and leaves culled from the garden-patch that morning; but now that he was closer, she saw the color in his cheeks and noticed, with a suppressed smile, the slight mustache curling at the ends, a new feature since the school had closed. She followed too the curves of the broad chest and the muscles outlined through his shirt. She had never thought him so strong and graceful, nor so handsome. (The smile came to the surface now--an approving, admiring smile.) It was the mountain-climbing, no doubt, she said to herself, and the open-air life that had wrought the change. With a laugh and toss of her head she unpacked her own basket and laid her contribution to the feast on the flat rock--the pie on a green dock-leaf, which she reached over and pulled from the water's edge, and the cake on the pink napkin--the only sign of city luxury in her outlay. Oliver's eye meanwhile wandered over her figure and costume--a costume he had never seen before on any living woman, certainly not any woman around Kennedy Square. The cloth skirt came to her ankles, which were covered with yarn stockings, and her feet were encased in shoes that gave him the shivers, the soles being as thick as his own and the leather as tough. (Sue Clayton would have died with laughter had she seen those shoes.) Her blouse was of gray flannel, belted to the waist by a cotton saddle-girth--white and red--and as broad as her hand. The tam-o'-shanter was coarse and rough, evidently home-made, and not at all like McFudd's, which was as soft as the back of a kitten and without a seam. Then his eyes sought her face. He noticed how brown she was--and how ruddy and healthy. How red the lips--red as mountain-berries, and back of them big white teeth--white as peeled almonds. He caught the line of the shoulders and the round of the full arm and tapering wrist, and the small, well-shaped hand. "Queer clothes," he said to himself--"but the girl inside is all right."