It was, therefore, a real regret to her when she presently encountered Jim Stafford, immaculately dressed and gloved and booted, walking down Fifth Avenue with a bunch of fresh violets in his button-hole and a smile on his good-natured face, which deepened into a look of real pleasure as he recognized her and lifted his tall hat.
She would have been quite content to bow and pass on, but he turned and walked with her.
“What luck!” he said, in his jolly way. “Would you believe that I was that moment thinking of you? The stories of the ox and the jockey are all over town to-day, and everybody is wanting to see you. When will you go out on my coach again?”
“Not until I get some better clothes to wear,” said Carter, in her impulsive way. “I never knew, until yesterday, how countrified country people are!”
“And who undertook to enlighten you, I’d like to know?” said her companion, frowning. “Some spiteful woman, of course! There’s nothing the matter that I can see, and if I were you I’d pay no attention to their criticisms.”
“You wouldn’t? Then you are distinctly not me, for I’m mending my ways with the utmost rapidity. You mustn’t ask me to appear again in public, until I can look like other people.”
“But that’s exactly what I don’t want. It’s just because you look—and are—unlike other people that I like you. It would be a perfect shame for you to be changed into one of the people you are going to imitate.”
“Never fear that,” said Carter, with a sudden seriousness. “We are utterly different peoples, I think—the North and the South! I have never been in the North before, and I feel I’m in a foreign land.”
“Don’t say that! I can’t bear to have you feeling that way. What could one do to make you feel at home here?”
“Nothing—I verily believe! The South is in my veins—but I think, in a way, kindness makes one feel at home everywhere—and you have been kind to me!”