“Why, Mother, I thought you were all on my side!” “But I’m not. I’m a woman, and you can’t see some things she says.” “Then it’s something awfully nice about me.” “Maybe the opposite.” “Then you’d resent it for me.” “I love her too, sir.” “Let me see the tip end of it where she signs her name!” “You can see that much, there”---- “Doesn’t she write a lovely hand!” He looked long and lovingly. “That pretty name!--Sallie! So old-fashioned, and so homelike. It’s music, isn’t it?” “I didn’t know you could be so silly, Charlie.” “It is funny, isn’t it? You know I think after all, we are made out of the same stuff, saint and sinner, philosopher and fool. The differences are only skin deep.” “You don’t think she is made out of ordinary clay?” “Oh! Lord, no, I meant the men. Every woman is something divine to me. I think of God as a woman, not a man--a great loving Mother of all Life. If I ever saw the face of God it was in my mother’s face.” “Hush! you will make me do anything you wish.” “No, no, I don’t want to see that letter unless you think it best.” “Well, you will not see any more of it, sir.” When Gaston met them at the depot with a carriage to take Sallie, her mother, and Helen Lowell, her Boston schoolmate, to the Springs, the first passenger to alight was Bob St. Clare. “What in the thunder are you doing here! This town is quarantined against you!” said Gaston. “Hush!” said Bob in a stage whisper. “She’s here. There’s her valise.” “That’s why you can’t land. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. I like you, Bob. But I won’t stand for this.” The crowd were pouring off the train and had cut off Sallie’s party in the centre of the car. “Gaston, I just came up for your sake. I’m looking after Miss Lowell. I’m lost, ruined. Scared to say a word. I thought maybe, you’d help me out. We ’ll pool chances. I ’ll talk for you and you talk for me.” “It’s a bargain, St. Clare.” “I want a separate carriage,--get me one quick.” In a few moments, the brief introduction over, Gaston was seated in the carriage facing Sallie and her mother whirling along the road, over the long hills toward the Campbell Sulphur Springs in the woods, two miles from the town. How beautiful and fresh she looked to him even in a dusty travelling dress! He was drinking the nectar from the depths of her eyes. “Now don’t you think Helen the prettiest girl you ever saw, Mr. Gaston?” she asked. “I hadn’t noticed it.” “Where were your eyes?” “Elsewhere. I’m so glad you are going to spend a month at the Springs, Miss Sallie. I used to go to school there when a little boy. They had a girl’s school there in the winter and boys under twelve were admitted. I know every nook and corner of the big forest back of the hotel. I ’ll see that you don’t get lost.”