Winslow had been fishing—or pretending to—all the morning, and he was thirsty. He boarded with the Beckwiths on the Riverside East Shore, but he was nearer Riverside West, and he knew the Penningtons well. He had often been there for bait and milk and had listened times out of mind to Mrs. Pennington's tales of her with hired girls. She never could get along with them, and they left, on an average, after a fortnight's trial. She was on the for one now, he knew, and would likely be cross, but he thought she would give him a drink.  
He rowed his skiff into the shore and tied it to a fir that hung out from the bank. A little led up to the Pennington , which the hill about three hundred yards from the shore. Winslow made for the kitchen door and came face to face with a girl carrying a pail of water—Mrs. Pennington's latest thing in hired girls, of course.
 
Winslow's first bewildered thought was "What a goddess!" and he wondered, as he politely asked for a drink, where on earth Mrs. Pennington had picked her up. She handed him a shining dipper half full and stood, pail in hand, while he drank it.
 
She was rather tall, and wore a somewhat limp, faded print gown, and a big sunhat, beneath which a knot of showed itself. Her skin was very fair, somewhat , and her mouth was delicious. As for her eyes, they were grey, but beyond that simply defied description.
 
"Will you have some more?" she asked in a soft, drawling voice.
 
"No, thank you. That was delicious. Is Mrs. Pennington home?"
 
"No. She has gone away for the day."
 
"Well, I suppose I can sit down here and rest a while. You've no serious objections, have you?"
 
"Oh, no."
 
She carried her pail into the kitchen and came out again presently with a knife and a pan of apples. Sitting down on a bench under the poplars she proceeded to peel them with a disregard of his presence that Winslow, who was not used to being ignored in this fashion. Besides, as a general rule, he had been quite good friends with Mrs. Pennington's hired girls. She had had three damsels during his in Riverside, and he used to sit on this very doorstep and them. They had all been and talkative. This girl was evidently a new species.
 
"Do you think you'll get along with Mrs. Pennington?" he asked finally. "As a rule she fights with her help, although she is a most estimable woman."
 
The girl smiled quite broadly.
 
"I guess p'r'aps she's rather hard to suit," was the answer, "but I like her pretty well so far. I think we'll get along with each other. If we don't I can leave—like the others did."
 
"What is your name?"
 
"Nelly Ray."
 
"Well, Nelly, I hope you'll be able to keep your place. Let me give you a bit of friendly advice. Don't let the cats get into the pantry. That is what Mrs. Pennington has quarrelled with nearly every one of her girls about."
 
"It is quite a bother to keep them out, ain't it?" said Nelly calmly. "There's dozens of cats about the place. What on earth makes them keep so many?"
 
"Mr. Pennington has a for cats. He and Mrs. Pennington have a disagreement about it. The last girl left here because she couldn't stand the cats; they her nerves, she said. I hope you don't mind them."
 
"Oh, no; I kind of like cats. I've been tryin' to count them. Has anyone ever done that?"
 
"Not that I know of. I tried but I had to give up in despair—never could tell when I was counting the same cat over again. Look at that black goblin sunning himself on the woodpile. I say, Nelly, you're not going, are you?"
 
"I must. It's time to get dinner. Mr. Pennington will be in from the fields soon."
 
The next minute he heard her stepping briskly about the kitchen, shooing out cats, and humming a darky air to herself. He went reluctantly back to the shore and rowed across the river in a brown study.
 
I don't know whether Winslow was with thirst or not, or whether the East side water wasn't so good as that of the West side; but I do know that he fairly haunted the Pennington farmhouse after that. Mrs. Pennington was home the next time he went, and he asked her about her new girl. To his surprise the good lady was unusually . She couldn't really say very much about Nelly. No, she didn't belong anywhere near Riverside. In fact, she—Mrs. Pennington—didn't think she had any settled home at present. Her father was travelling over the country somewhere. Nelly was a good little girl, and very obliging. Beyond this Winslow could get no more information, so he went around and talked to Nelly, who was sitting on the bench under the poplars and seemed absorbed in watching the sunset.
 
She dropped her g's badly and made some grammatical errors that caused Winslow's flesh to creep on his bones. But any man could have forgiven mistakes from such dimpled lips in such a sweet voice.
 
He asked her to go for a row up the river in the and she ; she handled an very well, he found out, and the exercise became her. Winslow tried to get her to talk about herself, but failed signally and had to content himself with Mrs. Pennington's meagre information. He told her about himself enough—how he had had fever in the spring and had been ordered to spend the summer in the country and do nothing useful until his health was restored, and how lonesome it was in Riverside in general and at the Beckwith farm in particular. He made out quite a dismal case for himself and if Nelly wasn't sorry for him, she should have been.
 
 
 
At the end of a fortnight Riverside folks began to talk about Winslow and the Penningtons' hired girl. He was reported to be "dead gone" on her; he took her out rowing every evening, drove her to preaching up the Bend on Sunday nights, and haunted the Pennington farmhouse. Wise folks shook their heads over it and wondered that Mrs. Pennington allowed it. Winslow was a gentleman, and that Nelly Ray, whom nobody knew anything about, not even where she came from, was only a common hired girl, and he had no business to be hanging about her. She was pretty, to be sure; but she was absurdly stuck-up and wouldn't associate with other Riverside "help" at all. Well, pride must have a fall; there must be something queer about her when she was so awful sly as to her past life.
 
Winslow and Nelly did not trouble themselves in the least over all this gossip; in fact, they never even heard it. Winslow was hopelessly in love, when he found this out he was aghast. He thought of his father, the ambitious railroad magnate; of his mother, the brilliant society leader; of his sisters, the beautiful and proud; he was honestly frightened. It would never do; he must not go to see Nelly again. He kept this resolution for twenty-four hours and then rowed over to the West shore. He found Nelly sitting on the bank in her old faded print dress and he straightway forgot everything he ought to have remembered.
 
Nelly herself never seemed to be conscious of the social between them. At least she never to it in any way, and accepted Winslow's attentions as if she had a perfect right to them. She had broken the record by staying with Mrs. Pennington four weeks, and even the cats were in subjection.
 
Winslow was well enough to have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn't leave Beckwiths', . At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a weak-brained idiot.
 
One day he took Nelly for a row up the river. They went further than usual around the Bend. Winslow didn't want to go too far, for he knew that a party of his city friends, chaperoned by Mrs. Keyton-Wells, were having a picnic somewhere up along the river shore that day. But Nelly insisted on going on and on, and of course she had her way. When they reached a little pine-fringed headland they came upon the picnickers, within a stone's throw. Everybody recognized Winslow. "Why, there is Burton!" he heard Mrs. Keyton-Wells exclaim, and he knew she was putting up her glasses. Will Evans, who was an especial chum of his, ran down to the water's edge. "Bless me, Win, where did you come from? Come right in. We haven't had tea yet. Bring your friend too," he added, becoming conscious that Winslow's friend was a pretty girl. Winslow's face was . He avoided Nelly's eye.
 
"Are them people friends ............