“You, sir!” she exclaimed, and blushed enchantingly under the pearly dew that covered her face.  “One of our cows broke pasture in the night and we think she must have crossed the creek and got over on your side of the meadow.  She’s a wonderful jumper.  We’ll have to be hobbling her soon, I reckon.”

“Do you milk?” he asked, charmed by the mental picture of so noble a dairymaid.

“Except when grandma is well enough.  You can’t leave it to the darkies because they are such terrible slatterns.  Put a cow in their hands and she’s sure to go dry before three months are over.”

She looked up at him, while the little brown mole played hide and seek with a dimple.

“Have you ever been told that you are beautiful, Miss Keren-happuch?” he inquired with a laugh.

Her pale eyes, like frosted periwinkles, dropped softly beneath his gaze.

“How can you think so, sir, when you have seen so many city ladies?”

“I’ve seen many, but not one so lovely as you are this morning with the frost on your cheeks.”

“I’m not dressed.  I just slip on any old thing to go milking.”

“It’s not the dress, that doesn’t matter—­though I can imagine you in trailing purple velvet with a trimming of sable.”

An illumination shone in her face, as if her soul had suddenly blossomed.

“Purple velvet, and what else did you say, sir?” she questioned.

“Sable—­fur, you know, the richest, softest, queenliest fur there is.”

“I’d like to see it,” she rejoined.

“Well, it couldn’t improve you!—­remember always that the fewer fine clothes you have on the better.  Tell me, Blossom,” he added, touching her shoulder, “have you many lovers?”

She shook her head.  “There are so few about here that any woman would look at.”

“I’ve been told that there’s an engaging young rector.”

“Mr. Mullen—­well, so he is—­and he preaches the most beautiful sermons.  But he fancies Molly Merryweather, they say, like all the others, though he won’t be likely to marry anybody from around here, I suppose.”

Her drawling Southern tongue lent a charm, he felt, to her naive disclosures.

“Like all the others?” he repeated smiling.  “Do you mean to tell me that Reuben’s piquant little granddaughter is a greater belle in the neighbourhood than you are?”

“She has a way with them,” said Blossom sweetly.  “I don’t know what it is and I am sure she is a good, kind girl—­but I sometimes think men like her because she is so contrary.  My Uncle Abel has almost lost his head about her, yet she plays fast and loose with him in the cruelest fashion.”

“Oh, well, she’ll burn her fingers some day, at her own fire, and then she’ll be sorry.”

“I don’t want her to be sorry, but I do wish she’d try just a little to be kind—­one day she promises to marry Abel and the next you’d think she’d taken a liking to Jim Halloween.”