The Trodden Way

She had an agreeable time that winter, enchanted to learn dancing,
happy at "showers" and parties, at sleigh rides and "chicken suppers,"
and the various species of village gaiety which ranged from moving
pictures every Thursday and Saturday nights to church entertainments,
amateur theatricals at the town hall, and lectures under the auspices
of the aristocratic D. O. F.--Daughters of the Old Frontier.

But she never saw any boy she preferred to any other, never was
conscious of being preferred, excepting once--and she was not quite
certain about that.

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, 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.

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.