Later, the head of the faculty suggested:
"If you want to see and appreciate the full contrast between the school-life and home-life of these people, persuade Miss Rawlins to play guide for you along Troublesome. To-morrow is Saturday, and she will be riding home. Why don't you ride with her?"
So, when "Clem's gal" started across the mountains, the young man rode at her side, listening eagerly to the new point of view that her speech developed, and marveling at the life he saw about him; a life in which he seemed to have stepped back a century. It was all wonderful, for spring had come to the hills and kissed them, and they were smiling with a smile of blossom and young leaf, and whispering with soft breezes and the singing of crystal waters.
For a time, her conversation was, "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir"; for, though at first it had been himself who was embarrassed, it was now she, and so, until she discovered how boyish and frank he was, she eyed him with shy and sidelong glances. But, at last, she began to reveal a flower-like personality which was altogether charming, strangely blended with a gravely mature point of view. Her language, partly the hard-conned "proper speaking" of the school, and partly idiom, amused him with its quaint out-cropping of Elizabethan phrases, which fell in tripping unconsciousness from her lips.
When near sundown they came to her cabin, he felt the girl's embarrassed eyes on him as her father invited him "to light an' stay all night." And at table, though his stomach revolted against the greasy and uninviting fare, he knew that, as she served him standing, her eyes were fixed upon him. He caught the high-chinned courage of her unapologetic loyalty, even to swinish blood, and gamely bolted his food with mock relish.
"God!" thought the boy, as he vainly tried to sleep that night in the swelter of the over-crowded cabin. "What a life it must be for her! And yet," he added, "what escape is there?"
The next day, she took him rambling along creek-beds where she had friends among the early flowers and ferns and budding things and the feathered and singing things. She was in an unusually light and gay mood, and chattered until he felt that he was in an enchanted forest, and through her talk, which was all of birds and blossoms and woodland mysteries, he caught brief flashes of insight into herself.