ntly to give place to a slender youth
who had crossed the fields and now stood with his hat off looking in.

"If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod."

Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he did not ask the slender youth
to enter. But Anne was more hospitable.

"Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you any lunch because we have
eaten it all up. But there's some coffee."

Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back from New York in a mood of
great discontent, to meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in
town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had expected the Fatted
Calf, he found none. Uncle Rodman left them at once. He had a certain
amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him patience with Jimmie
Ford.

Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his summer.

"Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at Austin's."

"Yes."

"He's going to marry Eve."

"Is he?"

"Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him--he isn't good style."

"He doesn't have to be."

"Why not?"

"Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the world than just--clothes,
Jimmie."

"I don't see it."

"You wouldn't."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, you look so nice in your clothes--and you need them to look nice
in."

He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was making fun of him.

"From the way you put it," he said, with irritation, "from the way you
put it any one might think that it was just my clothes----"

"That make you attractive? Oh, _no_, Jimmie. You have nice eyes and--and
a way with you."

She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and her own eyes were on it. She
was as demure as possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly
self-possessed.

And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness had always been his strong
suit with Anne. He was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had hurt
his vanity.

"I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't care what the world
thinks. She doesn't care what any one thinks. She goes right along taking
everything that comes her way--and giving nothing."

"Did you want her to give you--anything, Jimmie?"

"Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that. But I wouldn't marry her if she
were as rich as Rockefeller--and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt
Maude's."

"Oh, Jimmie--sour grapes."

"Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said one day that if she wanted a
man she'd ask him to marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose. I
can't stand that