e had, anyway--how I'd do a thing."

"You mean, gracefully or--"

"I mean--"

"Hello!" said Stannard's voice. "What are you two chinning about
before the cows come home?"

CHAPTER IV

IN UNTRODDEN FIELDS

"You don't want to have much to do with that fellow," said Stannard,
when Bruce Fearing had gone on about whatever business he had in
hand.

"Why not?" Elliott's tone was short. She had wanted to hear what Bruce
was going to say.

"Oh, he is all right, enough, I guess, but nobody knows where he came
from. He and that Pete brother of his are no relations of ours, or of
Aunt Jessica's either."

"How does he happen to be living here, then?"

"Search me. Some kind of a pick-up, I gathered. Nobody talks much
about it. They take him as a matter of course. All right enough for
them, if they want to, but they really ought to warn strangers. A
fellow would think he was--er--all right, you know."

Stannard's words made Elliott very uncomfortable. She thought the
reason they disquieted her was that she had rather liked Bruce
Fearing, and now to have him turn out a person whom she couldn't be as
friendly with as she wished was disconcerting. It was only another
point in her indictment of life on the Cameron farm; one couldn't tell
whom one was knowing. But she determined to sound Laura, which would
be easy enough, and Stannard's charge might prove unfounded.

But sounding Laura was not easy, chiefly for the reason Stannard had
shrewdly deduced, that the Robert Camerons took Peter and Bruce
Fearing in quite as matter-of-fact a way as they took themselves.
Laura even failed to discover that she was being sounded.

"Who is this 'Pete' you're always talking about?" Elliott asked.

"Bruce's older brother--I almost said ours." The two girls were
skimming currants, Laura with the swift skill of accustomed fingers,
Elliott more slowly. "He is perfectly fine. I wish you could know
him."

"I gathered he was Bruce's brother."

"He's not a bit like Bruce. Pete is short and dark and as quick as a
flash. You'd know he would make a splendid aviator. There was a letter
in the 'Upton News' last night from an Upton doctor who is over there,
attached now to our boys' camp; did you see it? He says Bob and Pete
are 'the acknowledged aces' of their squadron. That shows we must have
missed some of their letters. The last one from Bob was written just
after he had finished his training."

"This--Pete went from here?"

"H