"How you talk! Why, Mr. Stuart is not an artist!"
"Isn't he? There are people who are artists though they never draw a line or mix a color; but don't you think we are devoting a great deal of time to this pill-peddler of literary leanings?"
"You are prejudiced," decided Fred. "Leanings indeed! He has done more than lean in that direction—witness that book."
"I like to hear him tell a story, if he is in the humor," remarked Tillie, with a memory of the cozy autumn evenings. "We used to enjoy that so much before we ever guessed he was a story-teller by profession."
"Well, you must have had a nice sort of a time up here," concluded Fred; "a sort of Tom Moore episode. He would do all right for the poet-prince—or was it a king? But you—well, Rachel, you are not just one's idea of a Lalla."
"You slangy little mortal! Go and read your book."
Which she did obediently and thoroughly, to the author's discomfiture, as he was besieged with questions that taxed his memory and ingenuity pretty thoroughly at times.
He found himself on a much better footing with Rachel than during his first visit. It may have been that her old fancy regarding his mission up there was disappearing; the fancy itself had always been a rather intangible affair—a fabrication wrought by the shuttle of a woman's instinct. Or, having warned Genesee—she had felt it was a warning—there might have fallen from her shoulders some of the responsibility she had so gratuitously assumed. Whatever it was, she was meeting him on freer ground, and found the association one of pleasure.
"I think Miss Fred or your enlarged social circle has had a most excellent influence on your temper," he said to her one day after a ride from camp together, and a long, pleasant chat. "You are now more like the girl I used to think you might be—the girl you debarred me from knowing."
"But think what an amount of time you had for work in those days that are forfeited now to dancing attendance on us women folk!"