“Who else is comin’ here to see you?” she inquired, as they left Little Hawss wistfully agaze at them across the old log fence.

Layson, for no reason he could think of, felt a bit uncomfortable, as he replied.  He temporized before he really told her of what worried him.

“Well,” said he, “there’ll be old Neb—­”

“Who’s he?”

“A servant who has been in our family for years.  He is a fine old darkey and we love him—­everyone of us.”

“And will he be all?”

“No; I understand that Mr. Horace Holton, also, will come with the party.  Mr. Holton and his daughter.”

It is possible that he may have flushed a little, as he spoke about this matter, or there may have been some slight hint of the unusual in his voice.  At any rate, the notice of the girl was instantly attracted.

“Daughter?” she inquired.

“Yes,” said Frank, “his daughter Barbara.”

“How old is she?” Madge’s curiosity had been aroused at once.

“About your age.”

She was delighted.  “And will I surely see her?”

“Yes; of course.”

“Do you suppose she’ll like me?”

Layson, from what he knew of Barbara Holton, scarcely thought she would.  He could not make his fancy paint a picture of the haughty lowlands beauty showing much consideration for this little mountain waif; but he did not say so.  He answered hesitatingly, and she noticed it.

“You don’t think she’ll like me!” she exclaimed.

“I didn’t say so.  Certainly she’ll like you.  Who could help it, Madge?” He smiled.  It did not seem to him, as his eyes studied her, that anybody of sound sense could.

She sighed.  “A woman could.”  She spoke with an instinctive wisdom which her isolated life among the crags and peaks had not deprived her of.  “A woman always can.  But, my, I hope she will!”

“She will,” said Frank.  “She will.  And my dear Aunt—­oh, you will love her.”

“Miss Aluth—­Aluth—?” She stopped, questioningly, still bothered by the name.

“Miss Alathea,” he prompted.  “She’ll like you and you’ll love her.”

The girl smiled happily.  “Uh-huh.”  Her acquiescence was immediate.  “Reckon maybe I’ll love her, all right, and I hope the other will come true, too.”  Suddenly she was stricken with a fear.  “But she won’t, though—­dressed the way I be!”

“What you wear would make no difference to my Aunt Alathea,” Frank protested, “any more than it would make to Colonel Doolittle.”

She did not speak again for quite a time, walking along the narrow mountain-path with eyes fixed, but unseeing, on the trail.  It was plain that in her mind grave problems were being closely studied.

“Maybe,” she said, at length, “I won’t be so very awful as you think!”

They had reached the path which led first to the bridge across the mountain-chasm making the rock on which her cabin stood an island, and then, across this draw-bridge, to the cabin itself.  She waved a gay and unexpected good-bye to him.