Olive Higgins Prouty

“ Laurel's father lived in bachelor's apartments not far away from the hotel. It was easy for him to come in every morning and have breakfast alone with Laurel close beside one of the high windows in the private apartment, while Miss Simpson went downstairs to the dining-room. A waiter in black, who treated Laurel as if she were a princess, and her father as if he were a king, would roll in a table with a snowy cloth on it and shining china, with all sorts of delicious smells creeping out from beneath inverted silver bowls. ”

“ Some fine instinct within her kept her lips as sealed as his. "Don't you like it?" she inquired, a little wistfully, for her father was still gazing at her with a sort of abstracted look which she didn't comprehend.
"What? The hat? Oh, yes. I like the hat very much," he assured her. "It's very nice, and your suit too. I like your suit, Laurel. Only you're growing up, and I don't know that I like that. I don't suppose I shall dare kiss you many years longer in the station before people," he laughed. "Young ladies don't like being kissed in public, I'm told." ”

“ You know how liking things does come in a flash sometimes."
"No. Tell me."
He was fearfully afraid she wouldn't. She was like the gray-tailed squirrels in the park in some ways, at times ready to be friendly and intimate, and at other times shy of him, and as timid as a chipmunk.
"Well, the first time I knew I liked the woods,"—Ah! one of her trustful moods—"wasn't when I was up there in them, but right in a city street, looking into an art-store window at a picture of a trail just like lots of trails we've tramped. ”