doesn't allow him nor any one else to kiss her," cried
Rita, with a touch of indignant remonstrance. Tom laughed as if to say
that he could name at least one who enjoyed that pleasant privilege.

Rita was at that time only sixteen years old, and had many things to
learn about the doings of her neighbors, which one would wish she might
never know. The Chief Justice had at least one virtue: she knew how to
protect her daughter. No young man had ever been permitted to "keep
company" with Rita, and she and her mother wanted none. Dic, of course,
had for years been a constant visitor; but he, as you know, was like one
of the family. Aside from the habit of Dic's visits, and growing out of
them, Madam Bays had dim outlines of a future purpose. Dic's father, who
was dead, had been considered well-to-do among his neighbors. He had
died seized of four "eighties," all paid for, and two-thirds cleared for
cultivation. Eighty acres of cleared bottom land was looked upon as a
fair farm. One might own a thousand acres of rich soil covered with as
fine oak, walnut, and poplar as the world could produce and might still
be a poor man, though the timber in these latter days would bring a
fortune. Cleared land was wealth at the time of which I write, and in
building their houses the settlers used woods from which nowadays
furniture is made for royal palaces. Every man on Blue might have said
with Louis XIV, "I am housed like a king." Cleared land was wealth, and
Dic, upon his mother's death, would at least be well able to support a
wife. The Chief Justice knew but one cause for tenderness--Tom. When
Rita was passing into womanhood, and developing a beauty that could not
be matched on all the River Blue, she began to assume a commercial value
in her mother's eyes that might, Madam B. thought in a dimly conscious
fashion, be turned to Tom's account. Should Rita marry a rich man, there
would be no injustice--justice, you know, was the watchword--in leaving
all the Bays estate to the issue male. Therefore, although Mrs. Bays was
not at all ready for her young daughter to receive attention from any
man, when the proper time should come, Dic might be available if no one
better offered, and Tom, dear, sweet, Sir Thomas de Triflin', should
then have all that his father and mother possessed, as soon as they
could with decent self-respect die and get out of his way.

As time passed, and Rita's beauty grew apace, Mrs. Bays began to feel
that Dic wit