r by showing us a few little neighborly
attentions. We are back in the good old civilized world once more, and
we are not asking any favors of Watson Grider."

"Oh, I shouldn't feel that way, if I were you," she qualified. "He seems
very humble and penitent this morning, though he is still twinkly-eyed,
and I couldn't make him talk much. He said we'd want to be having our
breakfast, and----"

"We don't breakfast with him," was the crabbed rejoinder.

"Why, Donald!" she protested, in a laughing mockery of deprecatory
concern. "I believe you are still angry. You really mustn't hold spite,
that way. It isn't nice--or Bankhead-y."

He looked her fairly in the eyes. "Don't begin by throwing the old
minister ancestor up at me, Lucetta. I can't help the grouch, and I
don't know as I want to help it. Every time I think of you lying there
under the big spruces, sick and discouraged, suffering for the commonest
necessities and with no possible chance of getting them, I want to go
out and swear like a pirate and murder somebody. Why doesn't he bring
that auto, if he is going to?"

As if the impatient demand had evoked him, Grider appeared on the wharf
and beckoned to them. Prime helped his companion up to the string-piece,
and had only a scowl for their late host as Grider led the way to the
street and a waiting auto. The barbarian stood aside while Prime was
putting Lucetta into the car and clambering in after her. Then he took
the seat beside the driver, and no word was said until the car was
stopped before the entrance of an up-town hotel, where Grider got down
to open the tonneau door for the pair on the rear seat.

"You'll want to have your first civilized breakfast by yourselves and I
shan't butt in," he offered good-naturedly. "Later on, say about ten
o'clock, I'll be glad to see you both in the ladies' parlor--if you can
forgive me that far."

Prime made no reply, but after they were seated in the comfortable
breakfast-room and were revelling in their surroundings and in the
efficient service he broke out again.

"Grider still has his brass-bound nerve with him; to ask us to meet him!
I'd see him in kingdom come first, if I wasn't spoiling to tell him a
few things."

"Perhaps he wishes to try to explain," came from the less vindictive
side of the table-for-two. "Think a moment, Cousin Donald: you two have
been friends and college chums, and--and Mr. Grider has been brotherly
good to you in times past, hasn't he?