"Were you?" she laughed.

"Surest thing you know! I'd 'a' never screwed up my courage to do it if you hadn't 'a' looked so kind and gentle and sweet. I just knew you couldn't turn me down----"

There was no mistaking the genuineness of the apology for his presumption. She smiled a gracious answer, and threw the last ugly suspicion to the winds.

He broke into a laugh and lifted his hand in the sudden gesture of a traffic policeman commanding a halt.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You know I was so excited I clean forgot to introduce myself! What do you think o' that? You'll excuse me, won't you? My name's Jim Anthony.

I'm sorry I can't give you any references to my folks. I haven't any--I'm a lost sheep in New York--no father or mother. That's why I'm so excited about this trip I'm plannin' down South. I hear I've got some people down there."

He stopped suddenly as if absorbed in the thought. Her heart went out to him in sympathy for this confession of his orphaned life.

"I'm Mary Adams," she smiled in answer. "I'm a teacher in the public schools."

"Gee--that accounts for it! I thought you looked like you knew everything in those books. And you've been to Asheville, too?"

"Yes."

"Suppose it's not as big a burg as New York?"

"Hardly--it's just a hustling mountain town of about twenty-five thousand people."

"Lot o' swells from around New York live down there, they tell me."

"Yes, the Vanderbilts have a beautiful castle just outside."

"Some mountains near Asheville?"

"Hundreds of square miles."

"Mountains in every direction?"

"As far as the eye can reach, one blue range piled above another until they're lost in the dim skies on the horizon."

"Gee, it may be pretty hard to find your folks if they just live in the mountains near Asheville?"

"Unless your directions are more explicit--I should think so."

"You know, I thought the mountains near Asheville was a bunch o' hills off one side like the Palisades, that you couldn't miss if you tried.

I've never been outside of New York--since I can remember. I'd love to see real mountains."

The last sentence was spoken in a wistful pathos that touched Mary with its irresistible appeal. Her mother instincts responded to it in quick sympathy.

"You've missed a lot," she answered gravely.

"I'll bet I have. It's a rotten old town, this New York----"

He paused, and a queer light flashed from his steel eyes.

"Until you get your hand on its throat," he added, bringing his square jaws together.

Mary lifted her face with keen interest.

"And you've got it by the throat?"

"That's just what--little girl!" he cried, with a ring of pride. "You see, I'm an inventor and I won a little pile on my first trick. I've got a machine-shop in a room eight-by-ten over on the East Side."

"A machine-shop all your own?"

"Yep."

"I'd like to see it some day."

He shook his head emphatically.

"It's too dirty. I couldn't let a pretty girl like you in such a place."

He paused and resumed the tone of his narrative where she interrupted him. "You see, I've just put a new crimp in a carburetor for the automobile folks. They're tickled to death over it and I've got automobiles to burn. Will you go to ride with me tomorrow?"

The teacher broke into a joyous laugh.

"Why do you laugh?" he asked awkwardly.

"Well, in the language of New York, that would be going some, wouldn't it?"

"And why not, I'd like to know?" he cried with scorn. "Who's to tell us we can't? You've no kids to bother you tomorrow. I'm my own boss. You've seen Asheville, but you've never seen New York until you sit down beside me in a big six-cylinder racing car I'm handlin' next week. Let me show it to you. I'll swing her around to your door at eight o'clock. In twenty-five minutes we'll clear the Bronx and shoot into New Rochelle.

There'll be no cops out to bother us, and not a wheel in sight. It'll do you good. Let me take you! I owe you that much for bein' so nice to me today. Will you go with me?"

Mary hesitated.

"I'll think it over and let you know."

"Got a telephone?"

"No."

"Then you'll have to tell me before I go--won't you?"

"I suppose so," she answered demurely.

They passed the big fountain beyond the Mall and skirted the lake to the bridge, crossed, walked along the water's edge to the laurel-covered crags and found a seat alone in the summer house that hides among the trees on its highest point.

The roar of the city was dim and far away. The only sounds to break the stillness were the laughter of lovers along the walks below and the distant cry of steamers in the harbor and rivers.

"You'd almost think you're in the mountains up here, now wouldn't you?"

he asked, after a moment's silence.