Though unacquainted with the specific nature of these American foods, he was acquainted enough with her to assume safely that they had nothing to do with the case, and he froze accordingly.

Feeling herself sent to Coventry she sprayed a tree with artistic concentration. The vanquished who can immediately find occupation enjoys twice the peace of victory.

"You can overdo that sort of thing," he warned coldly.

"But I've only just started," she explained. "I was occupied in an entirely different manner half an hour ago."

"Were you in the woods shooting?" he asked. The idea had been uneasily haunting him.

"That happens to be it," she replied, visibly impressed by his psychic powers.

"Were you having any trouble?" he asked, the psychic powers holding out.

She quickly considered this question, then came to the conclusion that her success with Calhoun Tandy had been a singularly easy one, much easier than she had expected.

"No trouble at all," she announced.

"Rabbits?" pursued Roycroft, indulging his need for thoroughness.

"No-o."

"Doves?"

"Mercy, no!"

"Merely shooting at targets?"

"Yes," she answered, with the pleasure of a candid soul that gets a chance at last. "Shooting at targets." He was silent for a moment.

"Then you wish me to see to the expenditure of the

money, making it cover the cost of labor as well?" he asked.

He magically infused into this change of topic the accusation that she possessed too little integrity at that moment to make the other topic worth continuing.

"Yes, please," she answered dismally, flinching under the implied charge.

"Trust me, then, to attend to it." He carefully lifted his cap, bowed stiffly, switched his riding crop under one arm, and prepared to seek the chess table.

All in the flash of a moment she arrived at the disconcerting conclusion that his good opinion meant worlds to her, that she really hardly cared to live without it. She wanted no more. Just his good opinion, of course. But she couldn't live without it, she couldn't live without it! His silent comradeship was all that made the hardships of her present situation endurable. While he stood by her side, everything seemed to go a little easier. That was the only way she could state it to herself things went a little easier. When his bright brown eyes looked at one of her wilting trees, she felt quite sure that it would start right in to freshen up. The sound of his resonant young voice was always as inspiring to her ears as the cooling splash of the pleasant lake, as the strong song of a bracing wind. For his sake-because he generally had one in his buttonhole-she loved the homely little "Florida flowers," pale pink, scraggly, periwinkly things that blossomed contentedly, almost eagerly, in waste spots of sand where even grasses disdained to grow. Somehow it was like him to favor this usually despised flower, and lift it from the ignominy of its low estate to the honor of dying on his manly chest-doubtless he ad

mired it for its rugged honesty. Honesty! Oh, dear! "Mr. Roycroft," she murmured, tremulously.

"Miss Laurie." He turned and stood staring at her, whether defiantly or deferently it was always hard to tell.

"You didn't like the the way I answered you—a little while ago."

"I hope I have not implied to you that it is any business of mine to intrude upon your private affairs."

"Has that remark anything to do with what I'm speaking of?" she asked, wishing she could manage once in a while to place her prepositions in the middle of her sentences instead of at the end, where they didn't elegantly belong-so the grammars said. Roycroft's prepositions always went so obediently to their right rooms!

"Would it not be presumption on my part to like or dislike your way of answering?"

"Would it?" she asked, vaguely. Why did he get so oddly angry with her, she wondered. Those sparkling eyes of his were now blazing, bewildering her with their depth and brilliancy. "Stop snake-charming me," she ordered, getting angry in turn.

"It is your privilege to answer as you please, especially to discourage my vulgar curiosity!"

"Don't be nasty," she begged meekly. "I know that you only ask-ask things in order to help me if you

"Then why do you not reply to such questions with equal sincerity and kindness?"

"Suppose I had told you I had shot at a man who annoyed me, what would you have done?" she asked experimentally, smiling in spite of herself. It was easy

for her to be cheerful when cheer was annoying to Roycroft.

"Found him and horsewhipped him."

“Oh,” she said, blankly, the smile fading. She instinctively knew that Calhoun Tandy was the last person in the world to be horsewhipped and not kill the whipper.

"Did you shoot at a man?” asked Roycroft, straightening out the arm that hugged the riding crop.

Now a knife is not a man; the meanest kind of an intelligence is aware of that.

"No, I didn't, I really didn't!" she cried, anguished to find that in her quest for honesty she had circled back to the same old lie and that Roycroft was leaving for it a second time. "Wait, wait," she cried, finding herself weakly near to tears. "I know that it is deceitful to pretend that something is so when it isn't, but is it as bad to pretend that something isn't so when it is?"

"Is this a veritable question, or another 'soup sandwich' proposition?" he asked firmly. "I should like to know before attempting a reply."

"Oh, Mr. Roycroft, I only want to say that often I take life as a joke because I don't dare take it any other way," she went on intensely.

In her voice was a subtle ring of sorrow that caught his attention and tamed the glare of exasperation in his fine eyes.

"I often pretend that things aren't so when they are," she hurried on, "not to be annoying to-to anyone, but because if I looked always on the frightening side of life it would sometimes be too hard for me to bear. I am speaking only the literal truth, Mr. Roycroft, life would be too hard for me to bear."

Unable to go on for the second, she stooped and, picking a lonesome little Florida flower from the weeds at her feet, busied herself straightening out its kinked edges.

Dropping his boyishly long lashes over his eyes, he industriously flicked the toe of his boot with his riding whip, frowningly silent. Like most men, he was made as uncomfortable by too much sincerity as by too little of it.

"If I broke only myself when I broke down," she continued, gently, "it wouldn't matter so much, but it upsets grandpa too, upsets him dreadfully, and that does matter, so it's largely for his dear old sake that I keep on pretending that things aren't as bad as they are. Right now they are very bad."

Here he lifted his veiling lashes to give her an agreeing look.

"Even you, Mr. Roycroft, who know so much, don't know how bad. The winter is near and my money is almost gone. But that is not the worst; the mortgage is what is haunting me, for there is something wrong about it."

From the sudden cut he gave his toe, one would have thought Herman Selig was using it for a bed pillow. "A hundred dollars is not much to own but it is a fearful lot to owe," she concluded sighingly, now trying to curl the Florida flower back into a bud again. “So, when anything extra comes up in the shape of a worry, I have to pretend a great deal-which often makes me appear to be lacking in common sense and honesty. But, believe me, Mr. Roycroft, packed away somewhere, I have a little of both."

"Ah? Thank you for letting me know," he observed, very distinctly and pleasantly.