"Don't you hear the men raving over it everywhere? Those from a good long distance especially—Oregon, for instance, that's my state you know; but you Virginians—"
"Are not given to boasting!" said the girl proudly.
"There you are! You are"—"a queer lot," he was about to say, but remembered himself in time. "You are—" he blundered; "one scarce knows how to take you."
"Don't take us!" said the girl quietly.
"Now, Miss Holloway," deprecated the young man, "you see, the things other people think you would be proudest of, you don't care for at all, and the things other people don't care for—"
"Perhaps there are some people who don't talk about the things they care for most. Perhaps," she went on, her flushing cheek and darkening eye belying her light tone, "that's a secret you haven't found out, and it may be the reason you don't know how to take us," she repeated.
"I'm not going to quarrel about it a morning like this," declared the young man as they went up the wide steps to the Rotunda and along the marble floor of the east wing which roofed over the rooms devoted to the learning of law.
"No, nothing is worth it," answered the girl as she leaned against the balustrade at the edge and looked off towards the mountains, and they both were silent.
It was a scene the young man had not yet gotten used to, nor the girl either, though she was born in its sight. Beyond the stretch of the outer grounds of the University, beyond the far-reaching roofs and spires of Charlottesville and the narrow valley of the Rapidan, rose, high and bold, the last spur of the Ragged Mountains. The blue haze veiled it even at this early hour; the frost clothing much of it showed all colors save those of sombre hue; and, set on its crown, just where it began to dip downwards, shone the whiteness of Monticello.