"Well, you see, mother, I do not know a great many, I am so shut up. Miss Grant, whom I wrote you about, is—well, you must see her. She is not the kind of girl that you can describe very well—she really is not the kind of girl that you can describe at all. We have been together all summer, and I stopped at her father's house for a few days when I came down from the mountains. They live in the most beautiful valley you ever saw."
Miss Clendenning was watching him closely. She caught a look that his mother had missed.
"Is she pretty, Ollie?" asked Miss Lavinia.
"She is better than pretty. You would not say the Milo was pretty, would you? There is too much in her for prettiness."
"And are the others like her?" The little lady was only feeling about, trying to put her finger on the pulse of his heart.
"No; there is nobody like her. Nobody I have ever met."
Miss Clendenning was sure now.
Malachi's second entrance—this time with the great china bowl held above his head—again interrupted the general talk.
Since the memory of man no such apple-toddy had ever been brewed!
Even Colonel Clayton, when he tasted it, looked over his glass and nodded approvingly at its creator—a recognition of genius which that happy darky acknowledged by a slight bend of his back, anything else being out of the question by reason of the size of the bowl he was carrying and the presence of his master and of his master's guests.