Inheriting her mother's physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red Mountain region, she was an early bloomer.

The youth of Smith's Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and languished in May.

Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal.

A few were jealous of the master.
Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes to another.

He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when she did so.