But for a vague feeling that Miss Lucy was neglecting him for her patient, John would have begun making a hero of Philemon R.Ward.As it was, the boy merely tolerated the man and silently suspected him of intentions and designs.
But when school opened, Philemon Ward left Sycamore Ridge and John Barclay made an important discovery.

It was that Ellen Culpepper had eyes.

In Sycamore Ridge with its three hundred souls, only fifteen of them were children, and five of them were ten years old, and John had played with those five nearly all his life.

But at ten sometimes the scales drop from one's eyes, and a ribbon or a bead or a pair of new red striped yarn stockings or any other of the embellishments which nature teaches little girls to wear casts a sheen over all the world for a boy.

The magic bundle that charmed John Barclay was a scarlet dress, "made over," that came in an "aid box" from the Culpeppers in Virginia.