It was old Dick Neeland’s son, Jim—vaguely understood to have been for several years in Paris studying art—and who now turned up in Gayfield during Christmas week.

Ruhannah remembered seeing him on several occasions when she was a little child. He was usually tramping across country with his sturdy father, Dick Neeland of Neeland’s Mills—an odd, picturesque pair with their setter dogs and burnished guns, and old Dick’s face as red as a wrinkled winter apple, and his hair snow-white.

There was six years’ difference between their ages, 40 Jim Neeland’s and hers, and she had always considered him a grown and formidable man in those days. But that winter, when somebody at the movies pointed him out to her, she was surprised to find him no older than the other youths she skated with and danced with.

40

Afterward, at a noisy village party, she saw him dancing with every girl in town, and the drop of Irish blood in this handsome, careless young fellow established him at once as a fascinating favourite.

Rue became quite tremulous over the prospect of dancing with him. Presently her turn came; she rose with a sudden odd loss of self-possession as he was presented, stood dumb, shy, unresponsive, suffered him to lead her out, became slowly conscious that he danced rather badly. But awe of him persisted even when he trod on her slender foot.

He brought her an ice afterward, and seated himself beside her.

“I’m a clumsy dancer,” he said. “How many times did I spike you?”

She flushed and would have found a pleasant word to reassure him, but discovered nothing to say, it being perfectly patent to them both that she had retired from the floor with a slight limp.

“I’m a steam roller,” he repeated carelessly. “But you dance very well, don’t you?”

“I have only learned to dance this winter.”

“I thought you an expert. Do you live here?”

“Yes.... I mean I live at Brookhollow.”

“Funny. I don’t remember you. Besides, I don’t know your name—people mumble so when they introduce a man.”

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