I

When next Bob was able to visit the Upper Camp, he found Thorne fully established.  He rode in from the direction of Rock Creek, and so through the pasture and by the back way.  In the tiny potato and garden patch behind the house he came upon a woman wielding a hoe.

Her back was toward him, and a pink sunbonnet, freshly starched, concealed all her face.  The long, straight lines of her gown fell about a vigorous and supple figure that swayed with every stroke of the hoe.  Bob stopped and watched her.  There was something refreshing in the eagerness with which she attacked the weeds, as though it were less a drudgery than a live interest which it was well to meet joyously.  After a moment she walked a few steps to another row of tiny beans.  Her movements had the perfect grace of muscular control; one melted, flowed, into the other.  Bob’s eye of the athlete noted and appreciated this fact.  He wondered to which of the mountain clans this girl belonged.  Vigorous and breezy as were the maidens of the hills, able to care for themselves, like the paladins of old, afoot or ahorse, they lacked this grace of movement.  He stepped forward.

“I beg pardon,” said he.

The girl turned, resting the heel of her hoe on the earth, and both hands on the end of its handle.  Bob saw a dark, oval countenance, with very red cheeks, very black eyes and hair, and an engaging flash of teeth.  The eyes looked at him as frankly as a boy’s, and the flash of teeth made him unaffectedly welcome.

“Is Mr. Thorne here?” asked Bob.

“Why, no,” replied the girl; “but I’m Mr. Thorne’s sister.  Won’t I do?”

She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin gauntlets from her hands.  Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her of the implement.

“Do?” he echoed.  “Why, of course you’ll do!”

She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great amusement.

“Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?” she asked.

“No,” replied Bob; “just ran over to see him.”

She laughed quietly.

“Then I’m afraid I won’t do,” she said, “for I must cook dinner.  You see,” she explained, “I’m Mr. Thorne’s clerk, and if it were business, I might attend to it.”

Bob flushed to the ears.  He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman’s directness was disconcerting.  She surveyed his embarrassment with approving eyes.

“You might finish those beans,” said she, offering the hoe.  “Of course, you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire.”

Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went around to the front.  There he stopped in astonishment.

“Well, you have changed things!” he cried.