"Gee," Sally said, "he's got a peach of a head. Who is he?"
"Harlowe."
"Hildegarde's friend? Merry, he is positively too good-looking to be true."
He was good-looking. He was more than that. Meriweather had to admit to himself that Hildegarde had been right—the boy there in the frozen garden belonged to the beauty of this silver scene as Lohengrin belongs to his swan and his silver star.
He rode up to the fence. "Harlowe?"
Crispin came forward. "Yes. You are Meriweather, aren't you? Hildegarde told me to look out for you. Some more people have come in, and she's giving them tea. And I wanted to see the turtle."
Meriweather presented him to Sally. "I should think you'd want to look at something warmer than turtles," she told him, "on a day like this."
"Red coats, for example?"
He was at his ease. Utterly without self-consciousness. That was, Meriweather was to find later, the secret of his poise. He didn't know that he was good-looking. He didn't in the least care. He didn't know that living in a small town was a handicap. He didn't know that there was any essential difference between himself and the smart and sophisticated crowd in which he found himself. And he didn't know because, as has been said, he didn't care. He was interested in life, eager. He swept everything else away. At this very moment he was telling Sally:
"I'm middle-western, and there's no large body of
