d saw in the
woods, so she sweated in the kitchen. And her work began two hours
before their day's labor, and continued two hours after they were done.
She slept, like one exhausted and rose full of sleep-heaviness, full of
bodily soreness and spiritual protest when the alarm clock raised its
din in the cool morning.

"You don't like thees work, do you, Mees Benton?" Katy John said to her
one day, in the soft, slurring accent that colored her English. "You
wasn't cut out for a cook."

"This isn't work," Stella retorted irritably. "It's simple drudgery. I
don't wonder that men cooks take to drink."

Katy laughed.

"Why don't you be nice to Mr. Abbey," she suggested archly. "He'd like
to give you a better job than thees--for life. My, but it must be nice
to have lots of money like that man's got, and never have to work."

"You'll get those potatoes peeled sooner if you don't talk quite so
much, Katy," Miss Benton made reply.

There was that way out, as the Siwash girl broadly indicated. Paul Abbey
had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere
neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to
hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail
fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to
any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He
brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She
proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during
the hour of her stay amounted to a dozen or so drawling sentences. With
no hint of condescension or superciliousness, she still managed to
arouse in Stella a mild degree of resentment. She wore an impeccable
pongee silk, simple and costly, and _her_ hands had evidently never
known the roughening of work. In one way and another Miss Benton
straightway conceived an active dislike for Linda Abbey. As her
reception of Paul's sister was not conducive to chumminess, Paul did not
bring Linda again.

But he came oftener than Stella desired to be bothered with him. Charlie
was beginning to indulge in some rather broad joking, which offended and
irritated her. She was not in the least attracted to Paul Abbey. He was
a nice enough young man; for all she knew, he might be a concentration
of all the manly virtues, but he gave no fillip to either her
imagination or her emotions. He was too much like a certain type of
young fellow she had known in other embo