“Don’t go pertendin’ ye don’t know yer purty.  Say, let me and you walk a bit and have a talk together.”  But Libby had another idea in her mind and curtly dismissed him.  Then she ran swiftly to the spring, for the words “The Doc will tell ye so, too” were ringing in her ears.  The doctor who came with the two beautifully dressed women!  He—­would tell her she was pretty!  She had not dared to look at herself in that crystal mirror since that dreadful day two months ago.  She would now.

It was a pretty place in the cool shade of the giant trees, and the hoof-marks of cattle drinking from the run beneath the pool had not disturbed the margin of that tranquil sylvan basin.  For a moment she stood tremulous and uncertain, and then going up to the shining mirror, dropped on her knees before it with her thin red hands clasped on her lap.  Unconsciously she had taken the attitude of prayer; perhaps there was something like it in her mind.

And then the light glanced full on the figure that she saw there!

It fell on a full oval face and throat guileless of fleck or stain, smooth as a child’s and glowing with health; on large dark eyes, no longer sunk in their orbits, but filled with an eager, happy light; on bared arms now shapely in contour and cushioned with firm flesh; on a dazzling smile, the like of which had never been on the face of Liberty Jones before!

She rose to her feet, and yet lingered as if loath to part from this delightful vision.  Then a fear overcame her that it was some trick of the water, and she sped swiftly back to the house to consult the little mirror which hung in her sleeping-room, but which she had never glanced at since the momentous day of the spring.  She took it shyly into the sunshine, and found that it corroborated the reflection of the spring.  That night she worked until late at the calico Doctor Ruysdael had sent her, and went to bed happy.  The next day brought her Hoskins again with a feeble excuse of inquiring if she had a letter for the doctor, and she was surprised to find that he was reinforced by a stranger from Hoskins’s farm, who was equally awkward and vaguely admiring.  But the appearance of the two men produced a singular phase in her impressions and experience.  She was no longer indignant at Hoskins, but she found relief in accepting the compliments of the stranger in preference, and felt a delight in Hoskins’s discomfiture.  Waya, promoted to the burlesque of a chaperone, grinned with infinite delight and understanding.

When at last the day came for the doctor’s arrival, he was duly met by Hoskins, and as duly informed by that impressible subordinate of the great change in Liberty’s appearance.  But the doctor was far from being equally impressed with his factor’s story, and indeed showed much more interest in the appearance of the stock which they met along the road.  Once the doctor got out of the wagon to inspect a cow, and particularly the coat of a rough draught horse that had been turned out and put under Liberty’s care.  “His skin is like velvet,” said the doctor.  “The girl evidently understands stock, and knows how to keep them in condition.”