was the well-known note that
presaged tears should she be opposed further. The Laird, all too
familiar with this truly feminine type of tyranny, indicated to his
son, by a lightning wink, that he desired the conversation diverted
into other channels, whereupon Donald favored his mother with a
disarming smile.

"I'm going to make a real start to-morrow morning, mother," he
announced brightly. "I'm going up in the woods and be a lumberjack for
a month. Going to grow warts on my hands and chew tobacco and develop
into a brawny roughneck."

"Is that quite necessary?" Elizabeth queried, with a slight elevation
of her eyebrows. "I understood you were going to manage the business."

"I am--after I've learned it thoroughly, Lizzie."

"Don't call me 'Lizzie,'" she warned him irritably.

"Very well, Elizabeth."

"In simple justice to those people from Darrow that you evicted from
the Sawdust Pile, Don, you should finish your work before you go. If
they were not fit to inhabit the Sawdust Pile, then neither is Nan
Brent. You've got to play fair." Jane had returned to the attack.

"Look here, Jane," her brother answered seriously: "I wish you'd
forget Nan Brent. She's an old and very dear friend of mine, and I do
not like to hear my friends slandered."

"Oh, indeed!" Jane considered this humorous, and indulged herself in a
cynical laugh.

"Friend of his?" Elizabeth, who was regarded in her set as a wit, a
reputation acquired by reason of the fact that she possessed a certain
knack for adapting slang humorously (for there was no originality to
her alleged wit), now bent her head and looked at her brother
incredulously. "My word! That's a rich dish."

"Why, Donald dear," his mother cried reproachfully, "surely you are
jesting!"

"Not at all. Nan Brent isn't a bad girl, even if she is the mother of
a child born out of wedlock. She stays at home and minds her own
business, and lets others mind theirs."

"Donald's going to be tragic. See if he isn't," Elizabeth declared.
"Come now, old dear; if Nan Brent isn't a bad woman, just what is your
idea of what constitutes badness in a woman? It would be interesting
to know your point of view."

"Nan Brent was young, unsophisticated, poor, and trusting when she met
this fellow, whoever he may be. He wooed her, and she loved him--or
thought she did, which amounts to the same thing until one discovers
the difference between thinking and feeling. At first, she thought she
was ma