Mrs. Thoresby and her elder daughter had taken a sort of dislike to Dakie Thayne.  They seemed to think he wanted putting down.  Nobody knew anything about him; he was well enough in his place, perhaps; but why should he join himself to their party?  The Routh girls had Frank Scherman, and two or three other older attendants; among them he was simply not thought of, often, at all.  If it had not been for Leslie and Mrs. Linceford, he would have found himself in Outledge, what boys of his age are apt to find themselves in the world at large,—­a sort of odd or stray, not provided for anywhere in the general scheme of society.  For this very reason, discerning it quickly, Leslie had been loyal to him; and he, with all his boy-vehemence of admiration and devotion, was loyal to her.  She had the feeling, motherly and sisterly in its mingled instinct, by which all true and fine feminine natures are moved, in behalf of the man-nature in its dawn, that so needs sympathy and gentle consideration and provision, and that certain respect which calls forth and fosters self-respect; to be allowed and acknowledged to be somebody, lest for the want of this it should fail, unhappily, ever to be anybody.  She was not aware of it; she only followed her kindly instinct.  So she was doing, unconsciously, one of the best early bits of her woman-work in the world.

Once in a while it occurred to Leslie Goldthwaite to wonder why it was that she was able to forget—­that she found she had forgotten, in a measure—­those little self-absorptions that she had been afraid of, and that had puzzled her in her thoughtful moments.  She was glad to be “taken up” with something that could please Dakie Thayne; or to go over to the Cliff and see Prissy Hoskins, and tell her a story; or help Dakie to fence in safely her beds of flower-seedlings (she had not let her first visit be her last, in these weeks since her introduction there), or to sit an hour with dear old Miss Craydocke and help her in a bit of charity work, and hear her sweet, simple, genial talk.  She had taken up her little opportunities as they came.  Was it by instinct only, or through a tender Spirit-leading, that she winnowed them and chose the best, and had so been kept a little out of the drift and hurry that might else have frothed away the hours?  “Give us our daily bread,” “Lead us not into temptation,”—­they have to do with each other, if we “know the daily bread when we see it.”  But that also is of the grace of God.

There was the beginning of fruit under the leaf with Leslie Goldthwaite; and the fine life-current was setting itself that way with its best impulse and its rarest particles.

The pincushion was well filled with the delicate, bristling, tiny-headed needles, when Miss Craydocke appeared, walking across, under her great brown sun-umbrella, from the hotel.

“If you’ve nothing else to do, my dears, suppose we go over to the pines together?  Where’s Miss Jeannie?  Wouldn’t she like it?  All the breeze there is haunts them always.”