or crept into Ware's cheeks. He hated her for that "I!" So
she was going to come that on him, was she? And he'd worked himself like
a horse to bring in more land. Why, he'd doubled the acreage in cotton
and corn in the last four years! He smothered his sense of hurt and
indignation.

"Don't you want to see the crops, Bet? Let me order a team and show you
about, you couldn't walk over the place in a week!" he urged.

The girl shook her head and moved swiftly down the path that led from
terrace to terrace to the margin of the bayou. At the first terrace she
paused. All below was a wilderness of tangled vines and brush. She faced
Tom rather piteously. What had been lost was more than he could possibly
understand. Her father had planned these grounds which he was allowing a
riotous second growth to swallow up.

"It's positively squalid!" cried Betty, with a little stamp of her foot.

Ware glanced about with dull eyes. The air of neglect and decay which
was everywhere visible, and which was such a shock to Betty, had not
been reached in a season, he was really convinced that the place looked
pretty much as it had always looked.

"I'll tell you, Betty, I'm busy this morning; you poke about and see
what you want done and we'll do it," he said, and made a hasty retreat
to his office, a little brick building at the other side of the house.

Betty returned to the porch and seating herself on the top step with her
elbows on her knees and her chin sunk in the palms of her hands, gazed
about her miserably enough. She was still seated there when half an hour
later Charley Norton galloped up the drive from the highroad. Catching
sight of her on the porch he sprang from the saddle, and, throwing his
reins to a black boy, hurried to her side.

"Inspecting your domain, Betty?" he asked, as he took his place near her
on the step.

"Why didn't you tell me, Charley--or at least prepare me for this?" she
asked, almost tearfully.

"How was I to know, Betty? I haven't been here since you went away,
dear--what was there to bring me? Old Tom would make a cow pasture out
of the Garden of Eden, wouldn't he--a beautiful, practical, sordid soul
he is!"

"What am I going to do, Charley?"

"Keep after him until you get what you want, it's the only way to manage
Tom that I know of."

"It's horrid to have to assert one's self!"

"You'll have to with Tom--you must, Betty--he won't understand anything
else." Then he added: "Let's look arou