"Are the blackberries ripening?" Colter slowly rose. Minga, standing lost in a stare of curiosity, saw the tall, straight, loosely-built figure and finely modeled face with its thin and curiously yearning line from cheek to jaw. The eyes of a hot blue were very intense, and the curious backward swath of deep chestnut hair made an unusual setting for the chiseling of a face that, while it was still young, was curiously marred with suffering, yet had something of debonair quality that the girl was too immature to analyze. Minga, hardly knowing why she did so, looked at the hands closed easily on the garden rake. Even to her crude perception they were disciplined hands with the signs of other than coarse toil upon them. Colter, in answering the question, advanced toward them. Both girls were conscious of the clean, trim set effect of the working shirt on his well-built frame; the tie was exact under his soft collar. His voice when he spoke was low, with a weak, shaky emphasis, but he answered Sard's question interestedly, "I think these berries could be greatly improved. The vines have grown full of dead wood. I've done a little cutting away, and perhaps with better soil treatment," he nodded to the pears, "they're very fine just now. Judge Bogart wants me to take a basket of them up to Mrs. Ralling. She lives on the upper road, I think." Perhaps there is nothing so surely indicative of certain training and breeding as the pronunciation of proper names, particularly names that have R and L in them. The foreigner in our country slurs these letters with childlike confidence. The badly-bred person, ear untrained to niceties of speech, furs the R and gobbles the L and chews his vowels. These are the curious unconscious ways by which the American shows his contempt of all distinguished nuances. Colter, so the two young girls observed, did none of these things. Neither did he employ the over-stressed nicety, the too careful method of the person who has not always spoken correctly. What he had to say he said gently, half thoughtfully. He stood looking at the girls without familiarity, but he showed no constraint. "I found your book, Miss Bogart." Colter drew the volume out of his coat hanging on a pear tree. Sard reached eagerly for it. "Then I did leave it out here!" She turned to Minga. "I was reading it here the day before you came--all this time in the grass, my 'Oxford Book of Verse,'" Sard, a true book-lover, examined the little volume affectionately. "The leaves don't seem to be hurt, and yet it rained two nights ago." She looked at Colter. "You took care of it?" He smiled in a pleased sort of way. "It was pretty well dampened, but I found a way to dry it without streaking. I," he hesitated, "I know a little about the treatment of wet paper." Colter looked off, knitting his brows thoughtfully.