"About a year—a little over."
"And you like it?"
"Yes; I like it."
In response to several demands, he had enthroned Miss Margaret on his lap by this time; and even there she was not contented. His head seemed to have a special fascination for her babyship; and she had such an insinuating way of snuggling upward that she was soon close in his arms, her hands in easy reach of his hair, which she did not pull in infantile fashion, but dallied with, and patted caressingly. There was no mistaking the fact that Stuart was prime favorite here at all events; and the affection was not one-sided by any means—unless the man was a thorough actor. His touch, his voice even, acquired a caressing way when Miss Margaret was to be pleased or appeased. Rachel, speaking to Tillie of it, wondered if his attraction was to children in general or to this one in particular; and holding the baby so that her soft, pink cheek was against his own, he seemed ruminating over the girl's replies, and after a little—
"Yes, you must, of course," he said thoughtfully; "else you could never make yourself seem so much a part of it as you do."
During the interval of silence the girl's thoughts had been wandering. She had lost the slight thread of their former topic, and looked a little at sea.
"A part of what?" she asked.
"Why, the life here. You seem as if you had always belonged to it—a bit of local color in harmony with the scenes about us."
"How flattering!—charmingly expressed!" murmered Miss Hardy derisively. "A bit of local color? Then, according to Mr. Stuart's impressions I may look forward to finding myself catalogued among greasy squaws and picturesque squaw men."
"You seem to take a great deal of delight in turning all I say or do into ridicule," he observed. "You do it on the principle of the country that guys a 'tenderfoot'; and that is just one of the things that stamp you as belonging to the life here. I try to think of you as a Kentucky girl transplanted, but even the fancy eludes me. You impress one as belonging to this soil, and more than that, showing a disposition to freeze out new-comers."