Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/261

Rh that Old Abe had but recently arrived from his periodic trip to the mountains with a full jug, which never failed to occupy the master and a favored few for some hours. Feeling they were safely occupied and would not appear in the front of the house to disgrace her, Betsy had been quite cordial to the handsome neighbor in her invitation to enter the house.

"Come in," she had smiled. "Rebecca and Philip have gone up to the attic to find a book. They will be down in a moment."

Betsy could not but be flattered by Spottswood Taylor's evident admiration for her. She had known of it for a long time—ever since she was quite a little girl in fact. For several years she had been conscious of the fact that, in the little country church where the Taylors and Bollings worshiped, Spot paid more attention to her profile than he did to the sermon. How a girl knows her profile is being studied is an enigma not to be solved, but know it she always does. Spottswood Taylor's sisters had never seemed to be conscious of her having a profile, even of her having a face—that is not until she had gone to Mill House to see Rebecca and then the Misses Taylor had been coldly and formally polite.

Betsy was a girl with few complexities in her