a supply.
There was much laughing and talking and badinage, but through it all
Judith held herself with a certain poise that gave all of the buyers
to understand that she was merely the store-keeper and did not wish to
be regarded in any other light.

Jeff was singularly silent while Judith was crying up her wares. He
stood moodily aside, looking on but never offering to purchase shaving
cream or other masculine requirements. He wished she had not come. He
resented her placing herself in a position for all of these wretched
persons to patronize her. He hated the look on Tom Harbison's face as
he edged closer and closer to the girl, insisting upon putting down
his name for one of every article offered for sale.

Judith, however, was so bent on being a salesman that she was
absolutely unaware of the admiration she had evidently created in the
eyes of young Harbison. When she went to her car to get the wares
stored in the back it was Harbison who sprang forward to assist her.
Jeff watched the couple as they went down the walk to the yard gate
and a suppressed fury gripped him when he noticed that Tom was much
closer to Judith than was necessary. He knew perfectly well that Tom
Harbison always walked too close to any girl, and had a habit of
leaning over any member of the fair sex with a protecting air,
occasionally touching her elbow as though to assist her over anything,
even so small as a pebble, that might be in her way. When they reached
the yard gate one might have supposed a dragon threatened the ladye
faire, so solicitous was his manner, so brave his bearing.

Jeff could stand it no longer. He ran down the steps and with long
strides arrived in time to assist the supposedly helpless maiden.

"I want to help you," he said shortly.

"That's very kind, but really the things are not heavy," and Judith
began busily picking out the articles from the back of her car and
putting them in a basket.

But Jeff had come to help, and help he would. He assumed a cousinly
air that put Tom Harbison's courtliness entirely in the shade. If any
protecting was to be done he, Jeff Bucknor, was going to do it. He was
the proper person to carry the basket of toilet articles as heir
apparent to Buck Hill and an avowed kinsman of the lady. He even
managed to crowd Harbison from the walk as, with basket in one hand,
he protected the astonished Judith with the other. When the back-door
customers were visited, the young master insisted u