Unconsciously, she slipped into the speech of the old days, “You sure don’t look much like you used to.  I never see nobody wear such clothes as them.  Not even Dad Howitt, when he first come.  Do you wear ’em every day?”

Ollie frowned; “You’re just like all the rest, Sammy.  Why don’t you talk as you write?  You’ve improved a lot in your letters.  If you talk like that in the city; people will know in a minute that you are from the country.”

At this, Sammy rallied her scattered wits, and the wide, questioning look was in her eyes, as she replied quietly, “Thank you.  I’ll try to remember.  But tell me, please, what harm could it do, if people did know I came from the country?”

It was Ollie’s turn to be amazed.  “Why you can talk!” he said.  “Where did you learn?” And the girl answered simply that she had picked it up from the old shepherd.

This little incident put Sammy more at ease, and she skilfully led her companion to speak of the city and his life there.  Of his studies the young fellow had little to say, and, to her secret delight, the girl found that she had actually made greater progress with her books than had her lover with all his supposed advantages.

But of other things, of the gaiety and excitement of the great city, of his new home, the wealth of his uncle, and his own bright prospects, Ollie spoke freely, never dreaming the girl had already seen the life he painted in such glowing colors through the eyes of one who had been careful to point out the froth and foam of it all.  Neither did the young man discover in the quiet questions she asked that Sammy was seeking to know what in all this new world he had found that he could make his own as the thing most worth while.

The backwoods girl had never seen that type of man to whom the life of the city, only, is life.  Ollie was peculiarly fitted by nature to absorb quickly those things of the world, into which he had gone, that were most different from the world he had left; and there remained scarcely a trace of his earlier wilderness training.

But there is that in life that lies too deep for any mere change of environment to touch.  Sammy remembered a lesson the shepherd had given her:  gentle spirit may express itself in the rude words of illiteracy; it is not therefore rude.  Ruffianism may speak the language of learning or religion; it is ruffianism still.  Strength may wear the garb of weakness, and still be strong; and a weakling may carry the weapons of strength, but fight with a faint heart.”  So, beneath all the changes that had come to her backwoods lover, Sammy felt that Ollie himself was unchanged.  It was as though he had learned a new language, but still said the same things.