out
the red lips. "I'd never dare to say she didn't understand how to manage
things, Chief of Staff to the General who runs the Universe, she is."

Then the serious mood came back as the girl stared out at the meadows
and growing grain of the "Eden" farmland. A sudden resolve had formed in
her mind--Jerry Swaim the type all her own, not possible to forecast.

"Father wanted me to know what it means to be independent. I'll find
out. If this 'Eden' can be so beautiful and profitable, what can I not
make out of twelve hundred acres, in a New Eden? And it will be such a
splendid lark, just the kind of thing I have always dreamed of doing.
Aunt Jerry will say that I'm crazy, or that I'm Lesa Swaim's own child.
Well, I am, but there's a big purpose back of it all, too, the purpose
my father would have approved. He was all business--all money-making--in
his purposes, it seemed to some folks, but I think mother knew how to
keep him sweet. Maybe her adventurous spirit, and all that, kept her
interesting to him, and her romancing kept him her lover, instead of
their growing to be like Uncle Cornie and Aunt Jerry. There's something
else in the world besides just getting property--'if a man went right
with himself,' Uncle Cornie said. There was a good sermon in those seven
words. Uncle Cornie preached more to me than the man who officiated at
the funeral yesterday could ever do. 'If a man went right with himself.'
And Eugene." A quick change swept Jerry Swaim's countenance. "He said he
wanted to say something to me. I think I know what he wanted to say.
Maybe he will say it some day, but not yet, not yet. Here he comes now."

There was a something new, unguessable, and very sweet in Jerry Swaim's
face as Eugene Wellington came striding down the walk to the rose-arbor.

"I'm through at last, little cousin," he declared, dropping into a seat
beside her. "Really, Aunt Jerry is a wonderful woman. She seems to know
most of the details of Uncle Cornie's business since he began in
business. But now and then she runs against something that takes her
breath away. Evidently Uncle Cornie knew a lot of things he didn't tell
her or anybody else. She doesn't like to meet these things. It makes her
cross. She sent me away just now in a huff because she was opening up a
new line that I think she didn't want me to know anything about.
Something that took her breath away at first glance. But she didn't have
to coax me off the place. I ran out here