Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/109

Rh unconventional and still, in ways he dimly recognized, far more alive to the true sentiments that lie at the bottom of all conventions than the greatest precisian for feminine modesty and effacement. She was not city bred, he was sure of that. She was—different—and he waited eagerly to hear her story.

When she came out again she was in a gown of blue print that had white lawn cuffs and a lawn collar, turned down, showing the soft hollow of her neck. He had thought her dainty in khaki, now, the background of Colonial mahogany, old china, old brasses, inevitably reared itself. She was not so much a "lady," he suddenly determined, as a "gentlewoman."

The simple dress suited her, it suited the surroundings, yet to Sheridan it suddenly seemed pathetic. Pretty gowns, fluffy gowns. He had a swift revision of girls he had known in the old days, decked like flowers. He wondered how many she had had of the ribbony, lacy things in which all girls must delight. Not many, this slimsy lady, he imagined. This plucky, slimsy lady, who had come out upon high adventure.

"Aren't you terribly lonely, sometimes?" he asked. For Thora, brimmed with kindly capacity as she was, could be no real companion to this girl. Barely a woman yet. What was in the heart of her? Tenderness for wild things, spirit to handle the rough men who had broken her privacy, pluck to establish herself so gaily in this wild. A girl who was proud to boast of her fighting stock, proud