A few pertinent questions
told him the remainder. He looked at the girl in wonder. In face and
form she was as lovely as any one of her age and type he ever had seen.
Her school work far surpassed that of most girls of her age he knew.
She differed in other ways. This vast store of learning she had
gathered from field and forest was a wealth of attraction no other girl
possessed. Her frank, matter-of-fact manner was an inheritance from her
mother, but there was something more. Once, as they talked he thought
"sympathy" was the word to describe it and again "comprehension." She
seemed to possess a large sense of brotherhood for all human and animate
creatures. She spoke to him as if she had known him all her life.
She talked to the grosbeak in exactly the same manner, as she laid
strawberries and potato bugs on the fence for his family. She did
not swerve an inch from her way when a snake slid past her, while the
squirrels came down from the trees and took corn from her fingers.
She might as well have been a boy, so lacking was she in any touch of
feminine coquetry toward him. He studied her wonderingly. As they went
along the path they reached a large slime-covered pool surrounded by
decaying stumps and logs thickly covered with water hyacinths and blue
flags. Philip stopped.
"Is that the place?" he asked.
Elnora assented. "The doctor told you?"
"Yes. It was tragic. Is that pool really bottomless?"
"So far as we ever have been able to discover.
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