If so,"-- he went boldly to the edge of it, then halted, and concluded with a boyishly bashful humor--"will you keep my application on file ?" Katie was not going to miss her chance of finding out something.

"I should want a guide who knew the territory," she said.
"I qualify," he replied shortly, with a short, unmirthful laugh.

"That is one advantage of not having spent one's days on sunny paths." His voice on that was neither bashful nor boyish.
"But you must have spent some of them on sunny paths," she urged, with more feeling than she would have been able to account for.

"You don't look," Katie added almost shyly, "as if you had grown in the dark." He did not reply.

He looked so much older when sternness set his face, leaving no hint of that teasing gleam in his eyes, that pleasing little humorous twist of his mouth.
Gently her voice went into the dark country claiming him then.