Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/137

 trustfulness of a child's. At his question the industrious young carpenter on the floor laughed jeeringly.

"Joe's beginnin' tuh take notice," he said, glancing at the visitor with deep meaning. Unlike his brother, he was not handsome; but strength and character showed in his face, tanned and burned by the mountain winds.

"Joe 'lows he's got a sweethea't in N' York," he drawled teasingly.

The young Apollo's face flushed richly. He twisted round on his elbow, and, turning his back on the group with an elaborate air of indifference, fixed his eyes once more on the burning logs. His brother opened his lips to speak again, but was silenced by an expressive glance from the head of the family.

Miss Herrick told them that she had lived in New York for eight years, although her home, too, was in the South. She answered their simple and numerous questions over the evening meal, served primitively on a bare pine table, and discussed facts that seemed like fairy-tales to these simple mountaineers,