"Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage," I quoted. Quoting poetry in a snow-storm while you

stumble through a woodland behind a girl who shows

no interest in either your prose or your rhymes has its

embarrassments, particularly when you are breathing a

trifle hard from the swift pace your auditor is leading

you.

"I have heard that before," she said, half-turning her

face, then laughing as she hastened on.

Her brilliant cheeks were a delight to the eye. The

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snow swirled about her, whitened the crown of her red

cap and clung to her shoulders. Have you ever seen

snow-crystals gleam, break, dissolve in fair, soft, storm-blown

hair? Do you know how a man will pledge his

soul that a particular flake will never fade, never cease

to rest upon a certain flying strand over a girlish temple?

And he loses-his heart and his wager-in a

breath! If you fail to understand these things, and are

furthermore unfamiliar with the fact that the color in

the cheeks of a girl who walks abroad in a driving snow-storm

marks the favor of Heaven itself, then I waste

time, and you will do well to rap at the door of another

inn.

"I'd rather missed you," I said; "and, really, I should

have been over to apologize if I hadn't been afraid."

"Sister Theresa is rather fierce," she declared. "And

we're not allowed to receive gentlemen callers,-it says

so in the catalogue."

"So I imagined. I trust Sister Theresa is improving."

[Illustration: She marched before me, her hands in her pockets.] "Yes; thank you."

"And Miss Devereux,-she is quite well, I hope?"

She turned her head as though to listen more carefully,

and her step slackened for a moment; then she

hurried blithely forward.

"Oh, she's always well, I believe."

"You know her, of course."

"Oh, rather! She gives us music lessons."

"So Miss Devereux is the music-teacher, is she?

Should you call her a popular teacher?"

"The girls call her"-she seemed moved to mirth by

the recollection-"Miss Prim and Prosy."

"Ugh!" I exclaimed sympathetically. "Tall and hungry-looking,

with long talons that pound the keys with

grim delight. I know the sort."

"She's a sight!"-and my guide laughed approvingly.

"But we have to take her; she's part of the treatment."

"You speak of St. Agatha's as though it were a sanatorium."

"Oh, it's not so bad! I've seen worse."

"Where do most of the students come from,-all what

you call Hoosiers?"

"Oh, no! They're from all over-Cincinnati, Chicago,

Cleveland, Indianapolis."

"What the magazines call the Middle West."

"I believe that is so. The bishop addressed us once

as the flower of the Middle West, and made us really

wish he'd come again."

We were approaching the gate. Her indifference to

the storm delighted me. Here, I thought in my admiration,

is a real product of the western world. I felt that

we had made strides toward such a comradeship as it is

proper should exist between a school-girl in her teens

and a male neighbor of twenty-seven. I was-going

back to English fiction-the young squire walking home

with the curate's pretty young daughter and conversing

with fine condescension.




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