ace, Joe could assume all the irritable
stick-to-itiveness of a child. "How about Miss Susie?"

He watched the shot. For a moment it had no seeming effect, and then
Mary Louise, turning loose all the pent-up outpourings to inner
questionings, in a fury of righteous self-justification: "You needn't
think I haven't thought about that. You needn't think I'm shirking my
duty in any way. If you _knew_, you wouldn't ask such a question.
Before you left we were just on the ragged edge, and now--well,
somebody's got to do something to bring the money in. The place don't
make it." Her voice quieted down a little. "It hasn't been an easy
question to solve. Come, Joe! Open the gate."

He watched her curiously. "But the servants? You've still got the
servants, Matty, and Old Landy, and that half-baked gorilla, Omar. Why
not----"

"Yes, why not?" She turned on him. "Why not shut down the place, too,
as well as dismiss all the servants, and live in one of the old stone
quarters? Why not? Why not let your heels run down if they want to?
It's much easier."

Quietly he pushed the gate open and stood waiting, holding it for her.
Something in his manner struck her, and she reached out her hand from
her seat in the saddle and touched him lightly as her horse swerved
past. "There, I'm sorry, Joe. But you just hounded me into it somehow.
I didn't mean it's that way with you. You know I didn't. You see what
I mean? One ought to try. Ought to try everything first, not just
give up because everything doesn't seem just right. I _have_ thought
about Aunt Susie, and it breaks me all up. But it can't be helped."
She waited till he closed the gate and with a quick swing-up into the
saddle drew alongside. Slowly they walked their horses up the avenue.

"I s'pose you're right," he said at length. "Only--only it has seemed
to me that there's a lot of good time wasted doing useless things.
Would you rather run a tea room than do anything else in the world?"

She looked at him but they were passing a bend in the road, and the
sun, having dipped behind a jutting hill, no longer lighted up the
dusky avenue, and Joe's face was in semi-shadow. "I'd rather hold on
to what I've got than lose the tiniest portion of it," was all she
said.

Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed. "If they could only see
me now!"

"They? Who, they?"

His face sobered, but there was a momentary twinkle about the eyes.
"Who? Oh, at the office." And then, as dismissi