wing she
had made of the thing she wanted. He divined in this movement of
Johnnie's but an attempt to approach himself, and, as she explained with
some particularity, he paid more attention to the girl than to
her words.

"I want a big enough hole here to put a bolt through," she repeated.
"Shade--do you understand? You're not listening to one word I say."

Buckheath turned and grinned broadly at her.

"What's the use of this foolishness, Johnnie?" he inquired, clinking the
strips of metal between his fingers. "Looks like you and me could find a
chance to visit without going to so much trouble."

Johnnie opened her gray eyes wide and stared at him.

"Foolishness!" she echoed. "Mr. Stoddard didn't call it foolishness when
I named it to him. He said I was to have anything I wanted made, and
that one of the loom-fixers could attend to it."

"Mr. Stoddard--what's he got to do with it?" demanded Shade.

"He hasn't anything; but that I spoke to him about it, and he told me to
try any plan I wanted to."

"Well, the less you talk to the bosses--a girl like you, working here in
the mill--the better name you'll bear," Shade told her, twisting the
drawing in his hands and regarding her from under lowered brows.

"Don't tear that," cautioned Johnnie impatiently. "I have to speak to
some of the people in authority sometimes--the same as you do. What's
the matter with you, Shade Buckheath?"

"There's nothing the matter with me," Buckheath declared wagging his
head portentously, and avoiding her eye. Then the wrath, the sense of
personal injury, which had been simmering in him ever since he saw her
sitting beside Stoddard in the young mill owner's car, broke forth.
"When I see a girl riding in an automobile with one of these young
bosses," he growled, close to her ear, "I know what to think--and so
does everybody else."

It was out. He had said it at last. He stared at her fiercely. The red
dyed her face and neck at his words and look. For a desperate moment she
took counsel with herself. Then she lifted her head and looked squarely
in Buckheath's face.

"Oh, _that's_ what has been the matter with you all this time, is it?"
she inquired. "Well, I'm glad you spoke and relieved your mind." Then
she went on evenly, "Mr. Stoddard had been up in the mountains that
Sunday to get a flower that he wanted, like the one you stepped on and
broke the day I came down. I was up there and showed him where the
things grow. Then it rain