Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto.  An impatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he turned.  It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive loneliness it struck him for the first time that he had never actually seen her before as she really was.  Like most men in his profession he was a quick reader of thoughts and faces when he was interested, and although this was the same robust, long-limbed, sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see through her triple incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety, and outrageous Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity that commanded his respect.

“You are back early from church,” he said.

“Yes.  One service is good enough for me when thar ain’t no special preacher,” she returned, “so I jest sez to Silas, ’as I ain’t here to listen to the sisters cackle ye kin put to the buckboard and drive me home ez soon ez you please.’”

“And so his name is Silas,” suggested Mr. Hamlin cheerfully.

“Go ’long with you, Mr. Hamlin, and don’t pester,” she returned, with heifer-like playfulness.  “Well, Silas put to, and when we rose the hill here I saw your straw hat passin’ in the gulch, and sez to Silas, sez I, ’Ye kin pull up here, for over yar is our new boarder, Jack Hamlin, and I’m goin’ to talk with him.’  ‘All right,’ sez he, ’I’d sooner trust ye with that gay young gambolier every day of the week than with them saints down thar on Sunday.  He deals ez straight ez he shoots, and is about as nigh onto a gentleman as they make ’em.’”

For one moment or two Miss Bird only saw Jack’s long lashes.  When his eyes once more lifted they were shining.  “And what did you say?” he said, with a short laugh.

“I told him he needn’t be Christopher Columbus to have discovered that.”  She turned with a laugh toward Jack, to be met by the word “shake,” and an outstretched thin white hand which grasped her large red one with a frank, fraternal pressure.

“I didn’t come to tell ye that,” remarked Miss Bird as she sat down on a boulder, took off her yellow hat, and restacked her tawny mane under it, “but this:  I reckoned I went to Sunday meetin’ as I ought ter.  I kalkilated to hear considerable about ‘Faith’ and ‘Works,’ and sich, but I didn’t reckon to hear all about you from the Lord’s Prayer to the Doxology.  You were in the special prayers ez a warnin’, in the sermon ez a text; they picked out hymns to fit ye!  And always a drefful example and a visitation.  And the rest o’ the tune it was all gabble, gabble by the brothers and sisters about you.  I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they know everything you ever did since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and a good deal more than you ever thought of doin’.  The women is all dead set on convertin’ ye and savin’ ye by their own precious selves, and the men is ekally dead set on gettin’ rid o’ ye on that account.”

“And what did Seth and Mrs. Rivers say?” asked Hamlin composedly, but with kindling eyes.