okra for the soup? Susie is
so busy and Bob and Jefferson are both in the field."

"Certainly, Mother," his cool answer gave no hint of the emotions which
were seething within him. Becky's fate was hanging in the balance, and
his mother talked of okra! He had decided some weeks ago that boarders
were disintegrating--and that a mother was not a mother who had three
big meals a day on her mind.

He went into the garden. An old-fashioned garden, so common at one time
in the South--with a picket fence, a little gate, orderly paths--a blaze
of flowers to the right, and to the left a riot of vegetables--fat
tomatoes weighing the vines to the ground, cucumbers hiding under their
sheltering leaves, cabbages burgeoning in blue-green, and giving the
promise of unlimited boiled dinners, onions enough to flavor a thousand
delectable dishes, sweet corn running in countless rows up the hill,
carrots waving their plumes, Falstaffian watermelons. It was evident
with the garden as an index that the boarders at King's Crest were fed
on more than milk and honey.

Randy picked the okra and carried it to the kitchen, and returning to
the Schoolhouse found the Major opening his morning mail.

Randy sat down on the step. "Once upon a time," he said, "we had
niggers to work in our gardens. And now we are all niggers."

The Major's keen eyes studied him. "What's the matter?"

"I've been picking okra--for soup, and I'm a Paine of King's Crest."

"Well, you peeled potatoes in France."

"That's different."

"Why should it be different? If a thing is for the moment your job you
are never too big for it."

"I wish I had stayed in the Army. I wish I had never come back."

The Major whistled for a moment, thoughtfully. Then he said, "Look here,
Paine, hadn't you better talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"That's for you to tell me. There's something worrying you. You are more
tragic than--Hamlet----"

"Well--it's--Becky----"

"And Dalton, of course. Why don't you cut him out, Paine----"

"Me? Oh, look here, Major, what have I to offer her?"

"Youth and energy and a fighting spirit," the Major rapped out the
words.

"What is a fighting spirit worth," Randy asked with a sort of weary
scorn, "when a man is poor and the woman's rich?"

The Major had been whistling a silly little tune from a modern opera. It
was an air which his men would have recognized. It came to an end
abruptly.

"Rich? Who is rich?"

"Becky."

The Major