You see, sightin' standin' timber and selectin' from the gen'ral show of the trees in the ground and the lay of roots hez sorter made me take notice." He paused.

"Then," he added, somewhat despondingly, "you don't know who she is ?" "No," said the editor, reflectively; "not even if it is really a WOMAN who writes." "Eh ?" "Well, you see, 'White Violet' may as well be the nom de plume of a man as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification.
The handwriting, I remember, WAS more boyish than feminine." "No," returned the stranger doggedly, "it wasn't no MAN.

There's ideas and words there that only come from a woman: baby-talk to the birds, you know, and a kind of fearsome keer of bugs and creepin' things that don't come to a man who wears boots and trousers.

Well," he added, with a return to his previous air of resigned disappointment, "I suppose you don't even know what she's like ?" "No," responded the editor, cheerfully.

Then, following an idea suggested by the odd mingling of sentiment and shrewd perception in the man before him, he added: "Probably not at all like anything you imagine.