, "has reached the age of embarrassing questions."

"And is being fed unpardonable answers," she said. "Between old Aunt
Timmie's declaration that it'll smell like heliotrope and taste like
possum the year 'round, and Uncle Zack swearing it's just a big race
track where everybody's horse will win, and doubtless the Colonel's word
for it that it's a perpetual spring flowing with ice-cold mint juleps, I
quite despair of the child's salvation. How have you been picturing it?"

"I passed that on," he ruefully admitted. "You and Ann can tackle it."

"I wasn't home this afternoon at his lesson time. Did he miss me?"

"Miss you! Ann says he went to your room about five o'clock, and then
came running to her saying something had happened to you. She was quite
a while getting him settled. And then, much shame to us, we realized
you'd not got back. I drove over to the Colonel's really expecting you
had stopped there." After a brief pause he asked: "Was that fellow much
unruly? I wouldn't disturb you about it, but think you ought to tell
us."

"About five o'clock," the girl mused. "That's most interesting, Bob.
I've told you, haven't I, that the child is tremendously psychic?"

"I don't know just what psychic is," he laughed. "It sounds like
medicine." And then repeated his other question: "Was Tusk much unruly?"

"Oh, no," she lightly answered. "Has Mr. McElroy been up in the hills
today?"

"There's the laziest chap in clothes," he declared. "I don't believe
he's done a lick of work since he came--and that's two months ago!
Personally, I don't care. He's bully company, and I'm not rabid for that
dinky little railroad, anyhow."

"It'll make all the difference to the mountaineers' future," she said.

"Quite right," he agreed, "and cut through my best pasture."

"Not your best pasture, surely!"

"My dear Jane, don't you know that when a railroad kills your cow it's
always your best cow? Pastures accordingly! Still," he added with a wry
look, "the people's good comes first, doesn't it! That's the proper
motto!" And suddenly he began to laugh. "Brent and your new friend up
there in the buggy ought to be a combination to keep the Colonel amused
for awhile! What do you think?"

She, too, had to laugh. The mental picture of the immaculate,
devil-may-care Brent McElroy--sent down in behalf of his father's
corporation to develop coal fields, to run a line for the little
railroad which Bob had just characterized as "dinky," and