"It isn't; it's not, a bit."
"Laws, yes! It's—oh—heaps different!" She nodded her lovely head in firm conviction. "It's heaps different and I'm goin' to know more about such things as clo'es. I ain't plumb poverty poor, like lots o' folks, here in th' mountings. I got land down in th' valley I get rent from—fifty dollars, every year! I'm goin' to find out about such things."
He looked at her, almost worried. It would be a pity, he thought instantly, for this charming child of nature to become sophisticated and be fashionably gowned; but, of course, he made no protest.
"You can learn a little something about such things if you stay right here," said he. "I'm going to have visitors, sometime before the summer's over, at my camp. My aunt, Miss Alathea, will be here, and our old friend, Colonel Sandusky Doolittle. He's a great horseman."
Instantly the girl showed vivid interest, not, as he had thought she would, in his aunt, Miss Alathea, but in the Colonel from the Bluegrass, who also was a horseman.
"Horseman, is he?" she exclaimed, her eyes alight.
"Yes; he's famous as a judge of horses."
"At them races that they tell about? Oh, I'd like to see one of them races!"
"Yes, he goes to races, everywhere, although he always means to stop immediately after the next one. It has been the races which have kept him poor and kept him single."
"How've they kept him poor?"