uld be very mean to charge them more, merely
because they'll pay it rather than get their meals anywhere else."

"Perhaps so," answered Captain Will Hallam, who had pressed this advice
upon the girl. "But it's always good business, you know, to get what you
can. A thing is worth what it will sell for, and your good dinners, Miss
Barbara, would sell for a good deal more than you are charging for
them."

But Barbara would not listen to the wisdom of "business." Hers was the
wisdom of a white soul, and it controlled her absolutely.

And it really was her own skill that made her table famous. She hired a
cook, of course, after her little business became prosperous, and
sometimes for a brief while she trusted to the cook's skill. Then her
conscience beset her because the breakfasts and dinners and suppers were
not prepared in that perfection which alone could satisfy this
conscientious little woman's soul. "You see, it isn't honest, aunty,"
she would say in explanation whenever she returned to the kitchen and
gave personal attention to every detail. "We are charging these young
gentlemen for their meals, and it seems to me dishonest if we give them
less than the best that we can. They come to us because they have heard
that we serve the best meals that can be had in Cairo. How mean and
wrong it would be for us to trade upon that reputation and give them
meals of an inferior quality! I simply can't get a cook who will do
things at their best, and so I must do most of the cooking myself, and
then I'll know it is well done."

She hired a "neat-handed Phyllis," in a cambric gown--which Barbara
insisted must be fresh and clean every day--to wait upon the table. She
hired a handy negro boy to wash dishes, scrub, and prepare vegetables
under her own direction. She did all the more important part of the
cooking herself, and the negro boy, Bob, simply worshiped the girl whom
he always addressed as "Little Missie."

XIII

A BATTLE AND AN ACQUAINTANCE

There were boys in Cairo, of course, and equally of course some of them
were bad. The bad ones used to do things to annoy Robert's "Little
Missie." Robert proceeded to thrash them upon every proper occasion, and
he did it with a thoroughness that left nothing to be desired
thereafter. When Robert had thrashed a boy, that boy went to bed for
repairs. And he was apt to be reticent as to where and how he had
received his bruises. That was because Robert always ended a fist