The boy teased but smiling ran away to do her bidding, as he always did.  He had no clothes besides the worn suit of homespun which he was then wearing, except one other of buckskin, gayly fringed on the sleeves and on the outer seam of the breeches.  This had been his pride till of late.  But he now took it down from its peg behind his cabin door and eyed it with new dissatisfaction.  Fashions were changing in the wilderness.  Gentlemen no longer clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts, nor even in the coarse homespun.  Not many, to be sure, were dressed like Philip Alston; but David had lately seen Mr. Audubon hunting in velvet knee-breeches and white silk stockings, with fine ruffles over his hands.  That gentleman had laughed at himself for doing it, but the sight had pleased the boy’s taste and gratified his craving for everything refined and beautiful.  It humiliated him to have no choice between the shabby homespun and the fantastic buckskin.  But he tried to find comfort in thinking that he would have a boughten suit before very long.  The judge had given him a calf.  The master of Cedar House was always kind when he did not forget, as has already been said, and he was most generous at all times.  The calf was now ready for sale to the first passing buyer of cattle.  Nevertheless, David sighed as he put on the buckskin suit, wishing, as only the young can wish for what they desire, that he had the boughten suit then to wear to the dance in the forest.

Yet Ruth smiled at him as if she were well pleased with his looks.  There were, to be sure, certain tangles in the gay fringes for her deft fingers to untangle.  There were, of course, many swift little touches to be given here and there, the caressing touches that no true woman can withhold from the dress of a man whom she is fond of.  So that David’s buckskin suit suddenly seemed to him just what it should be—­as all that a man wears or has or is always does seem, when a woman’s caressing touches have convinced him that everything is right.  Indeed, David forgot to think any more of his own clothes or of himself.  Looking at Ruth he thought only of her.

He did not know what it was that she wore.  He did not know that the muslin of her dress had cost an hundred francs the yard.  He did not know how charmingly odd the mode of its make was, since Ruth’s little hands had planned it out of her own pretty head in enchanting ignorance of the fashion.  He knew nothing of the value of the three-cornered kerchief of white lace which tied down her gypsy hat.  He did not notice that the flowers on her hat were primroses, or that the long gloves meeting the short sleeves and the slender little slippers peeping from beneath her skirt, were both of the finest primrose kid.  He saw only the beauty of her face smiling at him from under the gypsy hat, the sweetness of her red lips, and the charm of her blue eyes.  And she seeing only the look that she had seen in every man’s eyes ever since she could remember, was not made vain thereby, as a less beautiful girl might have been.  She took it all for granted and thought no more about it.  Rising on the tips of her toes, she put back an unruly lock of David’s hair with a last loving little pat.