“Florence!” her mother called down from the window:  whereupon both Florence and her Aunt Julia were instantly apprehensive, for Mrs. George Atwater’s lack of tact was a legend in the family.  “Florence!  Where on earth are you going?”

“Never mind!” Florence thought best to respond.  “Never mind!”

“You’d better come in,” Mrs. Atwater called, her voice necessarily louder as the party moved onward.

“Never mind!” Florence called back.

Mrs. Atwater leaned out of the window.  “Where are you going?  Come back and get your hat.  You’ll get a sunstroke!”

Florence was able to conceal her indignation, and merely waved a hand in airy dismissal as they passed from Mrs. Atwater’s sight, leaving her still shouting.

The daughter smiled negligently and shrugged her shoulders.  “She’ll get over it!” she said.

“Who?”

“My mother.  She was the one makin’ all that noise,” said Florence.  “Sometimes I do what she says:  sometimes I don’t.  It’s all accordings to the way I feel.”  She looked up in her companion’s face, and her expression became politely fond as she thought how uncouth he was, for in Florence’s eye Noble Dill was truly rare, exquisite, and unfamiliar; and she believed that he was obs, too, whatever that meant.  She often thought about him, and no longer ago than yesterday she had told Kitty Silver that she couldn’t see “how Aunt Julia could look at anybody else!”

Florence’s selection of Noble Dill for the bright favourite of her dreams was one of her own mysteries.  Noble was not beautiful, neither did he present to the ordinary eye of man anything especially rare, exquisite, unfamiliar, or even so distinguished as to be obsolete.  He was about twenty-two, but not one of those book-read sportsmen of that age, confident in clothes and manner, easy travellers and debonair; that is to say, Noble was not of the worldly type twenty-two.  True, he had graduated from the High-school before entering his father’s Real Estate and Insurance office, but his geographical experiences (in particular) had been limited to three or four railway excursions, at special rates, to such points of interest as Mammoth Cave and Petoskey, Michigan.  His other experiences were not more sparkling, and except for the emotions within him, he was in all the qualities of his mind as well as in his bodily contours and the apparel sheltering the latter, the most commonplace person in Florence’s visible world.  The inner areas of the first and second fingers of his left hand bore cigarette stains, seemingly indelible:  the first and second fingers of his right hand were strongly ornamented in a like manner; tokens proving him ambidextrous to but a limited extent, however.  Moreover, his garments and garnitures were not comparable to those of either Newland Sanders or that dapper antique, Mr. Ridgely.  Noble’s straw hat might have brightened under the treatment of lemon juice or other restorative; his scarf was folded to hide a spot that worked steadily toward a complete visibility, and some recent efforts upon his trousers with a tepid iron, in his bedchamber at home, counteracted but feebly that tendency of cloth to sculpture itself in hummocks upon repeated pressure of the human knee.