tted it. And then to her amazement and
her happiness, for it was good to mother this long-legged piece of
masculinity, she found the boy kneeling by her side, his head buried on
her shoulder.

"I suppose," he said, looking up after a minute and blinking, "she had
an old black mammy that took care of her and loved her and that she
loved. Perhaps," contemptuously, "she played with nigger babies when
they were cute and small. Nigger babies can be awful cute."

Mrs. Pickens smoothed his ruffled hair, but said nothing.

"Well, I'm a Georgia cracker," he declared next, with desperate
calmness, "and she's right in thinking I come cheap."

"She didn't mean it like that!"

"I don't know what she meant," he went on wearily. "I don't half
understand her. The only time we get along together is when neither of
us says a word."

Mrs. Pickens laughed, and Dick, rising sheepishly to his feet, walked to
the open window. When he turned back he seemed his usual self again.

"I'll be out of the way soon enough now," he said. "I'm off on the road
to-morrow."

"Yes, dear."

"You couldn't go to her room by and by, could you, and tell her I'm
sorry I made such a rumpus?"

"Of course. And I will say, Dick, that I think this time she is as much
to blame as you. You only ran down the darkies, but she----"

"She lambasted me, all right. I know I'm not her kind. But what does she
think she's going to get?" His anger flared up again for a moment. "Does
she expect to find a prince in that precious school of hers? Or perhaps
she thinks she'll meet him when she goes to work in Wall Street. That's
so, she might, and he'd fall to her, all right."

He grew jealous at his picture and fear overtook him; for as Mrs.
Pickens had said, there was more than one beau for a pretty girl, and
Hertha was more than pretty--she was a woman whom a man could not
forget.

"I've got to have her," he said, looking beyond the reach of the room
out into the space in which Hertha's self stood out before him. "I can't
see anything without her. You're mighty good to me," he added as he
turned to go, "it was a lucky day when Jim Watson steered me up these
steps."

"I haven't done anything," Mrs. Pickens made haste to answer, "but I
promise after this I'll do what I can."

At ten o'clock she knocked at his door. He opened to her at once, and,
seeing his face drop, she knew that he had hoped for a word from another
visitor.

"You'll see her at breakfast, Dick;