by that surface control which puzzled her demonstrative
Aunt Matilda, she surprised her cheeks burning and her blood beating
in her throat.

With this physical agitation came an army of disagreeable and
disturbing thoughts. At first they were only recollections of
irritations past; the tiny maladjustments of her life; things by which
she owed vengeance of slight wrongs. They came together at length,
into one great, sore grievance--the forwardness, the utter, mortifying
impudence, of Mr. Chester. It was long before she admitted this as a
cause of irritation; once admitted, it overshadowed all her other
complaints against life.

Timidly, she approached stage by stage that scene on the lawn, that
unaccountable moment in the kitchen. Again she saw his great shoulders
heave with unnecessary strength at the ridiculous cracker box; again
she caught the sense of confinement with a machine of crushing
strength and power. It seemed to her that her retina still danced with
the impression of him as he turned to face her, as he flashed upon her
like a drawn weapon. She found herself looking down at the dusty road;
suddenly she grew so sick and faint that the breath deserted her body
and she had to lean against the gate post for support. The touch of
it against her body revived her with a start, and brought to her mind
the extent and folly of her own imaginings. She pulled herself
together and dropped her parasol to shield her face from Maria, who
was hurrying over from the kitchen garden.

* * * * *

Life flowed in immediately. A hundred details of a household, of a
fruit farm in the picking season, awaited her attention. Her orchard
and the Tiffany orchard were conducted together on a kind of a loose
co-operative system devised by the Judge to give her the greatest
amount of freedom with just as much responsibility as would be good
for her. Foreseeing that Alice Sturtevant's daughter would never live
on a farm indefinitely, that marriage or her own kind would claim her
in the end, he arranged everything so that her oversight might pass on
short notice to Olsen or to himself. In this harvest season, for
example, he secured for both farms the cutters and pickers--the
hardest problem for the Californian farmer. Also, the fruit went to
his own sheds and yards for cutting and drying. He was among the
sturdy minority who stood out against the co-operative driers which
had absorbed most of th