"The what?"
"The jologist. Jason's my cousin. I wasn't thar that summer. Jason's always talkin' 'bout you."
"Well, well—I guess I am. That is curious."
"Jason's mammy was a Honeycutt an' she married my daddy an' they run away," she went on eagerly, "an' I had to foller 'em."
"Where's Jason?" Again her eyes filled.
"I don't know."
John Burnham put his hand on her head gently and turned to his desk. He rang the bell and when the pupils trooped back she was hard at work, and she felt proud when she observed several girls looking back to see what she was doing, and again she was mystified that each face showed the same expression of wonder and of something else that curiously displeased her, and she wondered afresh why it was that everything in that strange land held always something that she could never understand. But a disdainful whisper came back to her that explained it all.
"Why, that new girl is only learning her a-b-c's," said a girl, and her desk-mate turned to her with a quick rebuke.
"Don't—she'll hear you."
Mavis caught the latter's eyes that instant, and with a warm glow at her heart looked her gratitude, and then she almost cried her surprise aloud—it was the stranger-girl who had been in the mountains—Marjorie. The girl looked back in a puzzled way, and a moment later Mavis saw her turn to look again. This time the mountain girl answered with a shy smile, and Marjorie knew her, nodded in a gay, friendly way, and bent her head to her book.