“Mine was killed in battle, Miss Sallie. I never knew him. But I had the most beautiful mother that ever lived. I lost her when a mere boy. And the world has never been the same since. I envy you.” “I forgot. Forgive me,” she softly said, looking up into his face with tenderness. “If I had only had a sister! How my heart used to ache when I’d see other boys playing with a sister! My poor little starved soul was so hungry, I would go off in the woods sometimes and cry for hours.” “I wish I had known you when you were a little boy,--I can’t conceive of a dignified orator swaying thousands running around as a barefooted boy. But you must have gone barefooted for I think Papa said so, didn’t he?” “Indeed I did, and sometimes I am afraid for the very good reason I didn’t have any shoes.” “Well, you wouldn’t have worn them if you had. I always wanted to be a boy just to go barefooted. I think girls lose so much of a child’s life by having to wear shoes.” “But you never knew what it meant to want shoes and not be able to have them,” he said, looking at the shining tips of her slippers peeping from the edge of her dress. “No, but I never thought these things made a great difference in our lives after all. I believe it is what we are, not what we have, that gives life meaning.” He looked at her intently. “I must get ready now for our drive. The horse will be here in ten minutes. Enjoy the view on the porch until I am ready,” and she bounded up the stairs to her room. In a few minutes she was by his side again dressed in spotless white as he had seen her first. She lifted the lines over the sleek horse, and he dashed swiftly down the drive. Oh! the peace and bliss of that drive along the lonely river road by its cool green banks! How he poured out to her his inmost thoughts--things he had not dared to whisper alone with himself and God! And then he wondered why he had thus laid bare his secret dreams to this girl he had known but twenty-four hours. Nonsense, down in his soul he knew he had known her forever. Before the world was made, ages and ages ago in eternity he had known her. He turned to her now drawn by a resistless force as a plant turns toward the sunlight for its life. How he could talk that day! All he had ever known of art and beauty, all he knew of the deep truths of life, were on his lips leaping forth in simple but impassioned words. For hours he lay at her feet where she sat on a rock, high up on the cliffs overlooking the river and poured out his heart like a child. And she listened with a dreamy look as though to the music of a master. At last she sprang to her feet and looked at her watch. “Oh! Mama will be furious. It will be after sundown before we can get home. We must hurry.” “I ’ll make it all right with your Mama,” he replied as though he were skilled in meeting such emergencies. “Don’t you speak to her. It ’ll be all I can do to manage her.”