A few days after he left she received a package of books,—­an odd collection of novels, magazines, and illustrated journals of the period.  She received them eagerly as an evidence of his concern for her, but it is to be feared that her youthful nature found little satisfaction in the gratification of fancy.  Many of the people she read of were strange to her; many of the incidents related seemed to her mere lies; some tales which treated of people in her own sphere she found profoundly uninteresting.  In one of the cheaper magazines she chanced upon a fashion plate; she glanced eagerly through all the others for a like revelation until she got a dozen together, when she promptly relegated the remaining literature to a corner and oblivion.  The text accompanying the plates was in a jargon not always clear, but her instinct supplied the rest.  She dispatched by Hoskins a note to Doctor Ruysdael:  “Please send me some brite kalikers and things for sewing.  You told me to ask.”  A few days later brought the response in a good-sized parcel.

Yet this did not keep her from her care of the stock nor her rambles in the forest; she was quick to utilize her rediscovery of the spring for watering the cattle; it was not so far afield as the half-dried creek in the canyon, and was a quiet sylvan spot.  She ate her frugal midday meal there and drank of its waters, and, secure in her seclusion, bathed there and made her rude toilet when the cows were driven home.  But she did not again look into its mirrored surface when it was tranquil!

And so a month passed.  But when Doctor Ruysdael was again due at the cabin, a letter was brought by Hoskins, with the news that he was called away on professional business down the coast, and could not come until two weeks later.  In the disappointment that overcame her, she did not at first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression, which was really one of undisguised admiration.  Never having seen this before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some vague “larking” or jocularity, for which she was in no mood.

“Say, Libby! you’re gettin’ to be a right smart-lookin’ gal.  Seems to agree with ye up here,” said Hoskins with an awkward laugh.  “Darned ef ye ain’t lookin’ awful purty!”

“G’long!” said Liberty Jones, more than ever convinced of his badinage.

“Fact,” said Hoskins energetically.  “Why, Doc would tell ye so, too.  See ef he don’t!”

At this Liberty Jones felt her face grow hot.  “You jess get!” she said, turning away in as much embarrassment as anger.  Yet he hovered near her with awkward attentions that pleased while it still angered her.  He offered to go with her to look up the cows; she flatly declined, yet with a strange satisfaction in his evident embarrassment.  This may have lent some animation to her face, for he drew a long breath and said:—­