Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/138

 to whom New York was but a name. She in her turn had some surprises. She learned that none of the family had been more than twenty miles from home, that none had ever seen a railroad train or a newspaper. They had heard these wonders discussed in the mountains where, from time to time, some echo of the outside world penetrated, but their conceptions of such marvels were strangely vague.

"Joe," the younger son, said little, but throughout the evening Miss Herrick was conscious of the fixed regard of his guileless eyes. She became strangely interested in the young mountaineer, as evidently clean of mind and heart as he was unconscious of his striking beauty. There was a wistfulness in his look which she interpreted rightly. He wished to speak to her—to ask her something—and dared not. Once she followed the direction of his glance, and saw on the brown wall of the cabin a colored lithograph, time-stained and torn of edge, but conspicuous as the one decorative object in the room. In the dim light of fire and tallow candle she could not see the subject, but she resolved to