lp thinking about them."

"You should have built a new house," said Jim Dodge. "A new house
would have been better and cheaper, in the end."

He thrust his spade deep, a sign that he considered the conversation
at an end.

"Tell one of the other men to dig this," she objected. "I want to
make a list of the plants we need and get the order out."

"I can do that tonight, Miss Orr," he returned, going on with his
digging. "The men are busy in the orchards this morning."

"You want me to go away," she inferred swiftly.

He flung down his spade.

"It is certainly up to me to obey orders," he said. "Pardon me, if I
seem to have forgotten the fact. Shall we make the list now?"

Inwardly he was cursing himself for his stupidity. Perhaps he had
been mistaken the night before. His fancy had taken a swift leap in
the dark and landed--where? There was a sort of scornful honesty in
Jim Dodge's nature which despised all manner of shams and petty
deceits. His code also included a strict minding of his own business.
He told himself rather sharply that he was a fool for suspecting that
Lydia Orr was other than she had represented herself to be. She had
been crying the night before. What of that? Other girls cried over
night and smiled the next morning--his sister Fanny, for example. It
was an inexplicable habit of women. His mother had once told him,
rather vaguely, that it did her good to have a regular crying-spell.
It relieved her nerves, she said, and sort of braced her up....

"Of course I didn't mean that," Lydia was at some pains to explain,
as the two walked toward the veranda where there were chairs and a
table.

She was looking fair and dainty in a gown of some thin white stuff,
through which her neck and arms showed slenderly.

"It's too warm to dig in the ground this morning," she decided. "And
anyway, planning the work is far more important."

"Than doing it?" he asked quizzically. "If we'd done nothing but plan
all this; why you see--"

He made a large gesture which included the carpenters at work on the
roof, painters perilously poised on tall ladders and a half dozen men
busy spraying the renovated orchards.

"I see," she returned with a smile, "--now that you've so kindly
pointed it out to me."

He leveled a keen glance at her. It was impossible not to see her
this morning in the light of what he thought he had discovered the
night before.

"I've done nothing but make plans all my life," she went on