Bennington remembered that this was the name of the curly-haired young man who had lent him the bucking horse, and frowned.

“No, I don’t believe I like that,” he recanted hastily.

“Take time and think about it,” she suggested.

“I think of one that would be appropriate,” he said after some little time.  “It is suggested by that little bird there.  It is Phoebe.”

“Do you think it is appropriate,” she objected.  “A Phoebe bird or a Phoebe girl always seemed to me to be demure and quiet and thoughtful and sweet-voiced and fond of dim forests, while I am a frivolous, laughing, sunny individual who likes the open air and doesn’t care for shadows at all.”

“Yet I feel it is appropriate,” he insisted.  He paused and went on a little timidly in the face of his new experience in giving expression to the more subtle feelings.  “I don’t know whether I can express it or not.  You are laughing and sunny, as you say, but there is something in you like the Phoebe bird just the same.  It is like those cloud shadows.”  He pointed out over the mountains.  Overhead a number of summer clouds were winging their way from the west, casting on the earth those huge irregular shadows which sweep across it so swiftly, yet with such dignity; so rushingly, and yet so harmlessly.  “The hills are sunny and bright enough, and all at once one of the shadows crosses them, and it is dark.  Then in another moment it is bright again.”

“And do you really see that in me?” she asked curiously.  “You are a dear boy,” she continued, looking at him for some moments with reflective eyes.  “It won’t do though,” she said, rising at last.  “It’s too ‘fancy.’”

“I don’t know then,” he confessed with some helplessness.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve always wanted to be called,” said she, “ever since I was a little girl.  It is ‘Mary.’”

“Mary!” he cried, astonished.  “Why, it is such a common name.”

“It is a beautiful name,” she asserted.  “Say it over.  Aren’t the syllables soft and musical and caressing?  It is a lovely name.  Why I remember,” she went on vivaciously, “a girl who was named Mary, and who didn’t like it.  When she came to our school she changed it, but she didn’t dare to break it to the family all at once.  The first letter home she signed herself ‘Mae.’  Her father wrote back, ’My dear daughter, if the name of the mother of Jesus isn’t good enough for you, come home.’” She laughed at the recollection.

“Then you have been away to school?” asked the young man.

“Yes,” she replied shortly.