"That depends on your standard. I don't know your father, but I do mine, and from what you have told me about yours I think they are about as different as two men can be. Answer my question--what is a gentleman?" She was leaning over a little, and tucking a chip under her toes to keep the water away from her shoes. Her eyes sought his again. "A gentleman, Madge--why, you know what a gentleman is. He is a man well born, well educated, and well bred. That's the standard at home--at least, that's my mother's. Father's standard is the same, only he puts it in a different way. He says a gentleman is a man who tolerates other people's mistakes and who sympathizes with other people's troubles." "Anything else?" She was searching his face now. There were some things she wanted to settle in her own mind. "I don't think of anything else, Madge, dear--do you?" He was really dismissing the question. His thoughts were on something else--the way her hair curled from under her worsted cap and the way her pink ears nestled close to her head, especially the little indents at each corner of her mouth. He liked their modelling. "And so according to your mother's and father's ideas, and those of all your aristocratic people at home, Hank here could not be a gentleman if he tried?" The idea was new to Oliver. He had become conscious now. What had gotten into Margaret to-day! "Hank?--no, certainly not. How could he?" "By BEING a gentleman, Mr. Aristocrat. Not in clothes, mind you--nor money, nor furniture, nor wines, nor carriages, but in HEART. Think a moment, Ollie," and her eyes snapped. "Hank finds a robin that has tumbled out of its nest, and spends half a day putting it back. Hank follows you up the brook and sees you try to throw a fly into a pool, and he knows just how awkwardly you do it, for he's the best fisherman in the woods--and yet you never see a smile cross his face, nor does he ever speak of it behind your back--not even to me. Hank walks across Moose Hillock to find old Jonathan Gordon to tell him he has some big trout in Loon Pond, so that the old man can have the fun of catching them and selling them afterward to the new hotel in the Notch. He has walked twenty-four miles when he gets back. Do these things make Hank a gentleman, or not?" "Then you don't believe in Sir Walter Raleigh, Miss Democrat, simply because he was a lord?" "Yes--but I always thought he wore his old cloak that day on purpose, so he could be made an earl." And a ripple of laughter escaped her lips. Oliver laughed too, sprang to his feet, and held out his hands so as to lift her up. None of these fine-drawn distinctions really interested him--certainly not on this day, when he was so happy. Why, he wondered, should she want to discuss theories and beliefs and creeds, with the beautiful forest all about and the sky breaking overhead?