"
When they reached the Rambo farm-house, it was necessary that he
should give his hand to help her down from the clumsy carriage. He
held it but a moment; yet in that moment a gentle pulse throbbed
upon his hard palm, and he mechanically set his teeth, to keep down
the impulse which made him wild to hold it there forever. "Thank
you, Mr. Clare!" said Miss Bartram, and passed into the house.
When he followed presently, shouldering her trunk into the upper
best-room, and kneeling upon the floor to unbuckle the straps, she
found herself wondering: "Is this a knightly service, or the
menial duty of a porter? Can a man be both sensitive and ignorant,
chivalrous and vulgar?"
The question was not so easily decided, though no one guessed how
much Miss Bartram pondered it, during the succeeding days. She
insisted, from the first, that her coming should make no change in
the habits of the household; she rose in the cool, dewy summer
dawns, dined at noon in the old brown room beside the kitchen, and
only differed from the Rambos in sitting at her moonlit window, and
breathing the subtle odors of a myriad leaves, long after Betty was
sleeping the sleep of health.
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