Blushing and paling she tried a ribbon on her hair, threw it aside, and picked up another.
"I am thankful for many things," she was thinking, "and most of all I am thankful that I am pretty.

I suppose it's better to be good like Judy Hatch, but I'd rather be pretty." She was at the age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development.
It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a cynic of a sentimentalist.
When she went down the flagged walk a little later to meet Abel by the blazed pine as she had promised, she was still smiling to herself and to the blue birds that sang joyously in the blossoming trees in the orchard.

At the end of the walk her smile vanished for she came face to face with Jim Halloween, who carried a new-born lamb in his arms.
"Many happy returns of the day," he began with emotion.

"I thought a present like this would be the most acceptable thing I could bring to you--an' ma agreed with me when I asked her advice." "It's very good of you--and how darling it is! I'll take it back and make it comfortable before I start out." Taking the lamb into her arms, she hid her face in its wool while they returned to the house.
"It ain't so young as it looks, an will begin to be peart enough befo' long," he remarked.

"Something useful as well as ornamental, was what I had in mind to bring you.