“Course,” said the woman.

“Go right along, Mavis,” said the man, and Marjorie turned to Gray.

“You can carry her things,” she said, and she turned to Mavis and met puzzled, unabashed eyes.

“Whut things?” asked little Mavis, whereat Marjorie blushed, looked quickly to Gray, whose face was courteously unsmiling, and started her pony abruptly.

It was a wonderful night for the mountaineer girl in the big-pillared house on the hill.  When they got home, Marjorie drove her in a little pony-cart over the big farm, while Gray trotted alongside—­through pastures filled with cattle so fat they could hardly walk, past big barns bursting with hay and tobacco and stables full of slender, beautiful horses.  Even the pigs had little red houses of refuge from the weather and flocks of sheep dotted the hill-side like unmelted patches of snow.  The mountain girl’s eyes grew big with wonder when she entered the great hall with its lofty ceiling, its winding stairway, and its polished floor, so slippery that she came near falling down, and they stayed big when she saw the rows of books, the pictures on the walls, the padded couches and chairs, the noiseless carpets, the polished andirons that gleamed like gold before the blazing fires, and when she glimpsed through an open door the long dining-table with its glistening glass and silver.  When she mounted that winding stairway and entered Marjorie’s room she was stricken dumb by its pink curtains, pink wall-paper, and gleaming brass bedstead with pink coverlid and pink pillow-facings.  And she nearly gasped when Marjorie led her on into another room of blue.

“This is your room,” she said smiling, “right next to mine.  I’ll be back in a minute.”

Mavis stood a moment in the middle of the room when she was alone, hardly daring to sit down.  A coal fire crackled behind a wire screen—­coal from her mountains.  A door opened into a queer little room, glistening white, and she peeped, wondering, within.

“There’s the bath-room,” Marjorie had said.  She had not known what was meant, and she did not now, looking at the long white tub and the white tiling floor and walls until she saw the multitudinous towels, and she marvelled at the new mystery.  She went back and walked to the window and looked out on the endless rolling winter fields over which she had driven that afternoon—­all, Gray had told her, to be Marjorie’s some day, just as all across the turnpike, Marjorie had told her, was some day to be Gray’s.  She thought of herself and of Jason, and her tears started, not for herself, but for him.  Then she heard Marjorie coming in and she brushed her eyes swiftly.

“Whar can I git some water to wash?” she asked.

Marjorie laughed delightedly and led her back to that wonderful little white room, turned a gleaming silver star, and the water spurted joyously into the bowl.

“Well, I do declare!”