deep in the past to be tragic, and she laughed.

"I used to think then that you were the worst, as well as the queerest,
boy I had ever seen."

"And now you know it," he said. Then: "What's your rush? I'm not trying
to get rid of you now."

"I positively must go back. We have company, and I ran away without
saying a word."

"Anybody I know?" inquired Tom.

"Three somebodies whom you know, or ought to know, very well: Mr.
Duxbury Farley, Mr. Vincent Farley, Miss Eva Farley."

His eyes darkened suddenly.

"I'd like to know how under the sun they managed to get on your
grandfather's good side!" he grumbled.

Ardea Dabney's expressive face mirrored dawning displeasure.

"Why do you say that?" she retorted. "Eva was my classmate for years at
Miss De Valle's."

He made a boyish face of disapproval, saying bluntly: "I don't care if
she was. You shouldn't make friends of them. They are not fit for you to
wipe your shoes on."

For the second time since his home-coming, Tom saw the Dabney
imperiousness flash out; saw and felt it.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Gordon! Less than an hour ago,
we were speaking of you, and of what happened at Beersheba. Mr. Farley
and his son both stood up for you."

"And you took the other side, I reckon," he broke out, quite
unreasonably. It had not as yet come to blows between him and his
father's business associates, but it made him immeasurably dissatisfied
to find them on social terms at Deer Trace Manor.

"Perhaps I did, and perhaps I did not," she answered, matching his
tartness.

"Well, you can tell them both that I'm much obliged to them for
nothing," he said, rising and going to the door with her. "They would be
mighty glad to see it patched up again and me back in the Beersheba
school."

"Of course they would; so would all of your friends."

"But they are not my friends. They have fooled my father, and they'll
fool your grandfather, if he doesn't watch out. But they can't fool me."

He had opened the outer door for her, and she drew herself up till she
could face him squarely, slate-blue eyes flashing scornfully into sullen
gray.

"That is the first downright cowardly thing I have ever known you to
say!" she declared. "And I wish you to know, Mr. Thomas Jefferson
Gordon, that Mr. Duxbury Farley and Mr. Vincent Farley and Miss Eva
Farley are my guests and my friends!" And with that for her
leave-taking, she turned her back on him and went swiftly acros