half bad.”

“They won’t like you though,” said Audry.

“Thanks. Why not?” Tom asked.

“They’ll think you’re uppish.”

“That’s news to me,” said Tom. “I was never called uppish before. I don’t see how you can think that.”

“I didn’t say I thought so,” she said. “But your staying in the cottage with us will make them think so. That’s what they’ll say, that you’re uppish. That’s just what Ned Whalen will think; I can just hear him asking, ‘Well, how’s things in the Executive Mansion?’”

“Oh now—” her brother laughed deprecatingly.

“Oh yes, he will,” she said. “That’s exactly what he asked Will Daggett; Will told me so himself. He has that abominable sarcastic way about him. I know just exactly the kind of things he’ll say. Things that make you mad, but that don’t give you a chance to denounce him. I can just hear him now.”

“Nobody wants to denounce him,” soothed her brother.

“I want to denounce him,” the girl said.

“He’s a very good worker,” Nielson urged; “Will said so himself. Good outdoor man too. Get along,” he concluded, addressing the struggling horses. “I can hear you flying off the handle some fine day or other and telling him how you hate him and then I’ll lose the best worker I’ve got.”

“I’m not an idiot,” said the girl. “You seem to know just exactly what I’ll do and say. Have I ever done or said anything?”

“You seem to know just exactly what he’ll do and say,” her brother laughed.

“Who was Will Daggett?” Tom asked by way of generalizing the conversation.

“He was a young gentleman,” said Audry. “And he kept the accounts and stayed in the cottage with us. He went home to prepare for college.”

“He failed to pass last year—g’long, Flossie,” said her brother disinterestedly.

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