Not
that I care so very much what they say, either."

Ardea let her horse pick his way down to the wood road, and when they
were approaching the Deer Trace gate: "You haven't promised yet, Tom;
and you must, you know."

"Not to see Nan? That's easy. I'll keep out of her way, if you can keep
her out of mine. All I care is to know that she is comfortably provided
for."

This he said, thinking only of the boy-time obligation voluntarily
assumed; but it was quite inevitable that Ardea should mistake the
motive.

"It is right and proper that you should care about that," she said
judicially. And a little farther along she added: "But I don't like your
attitude."

"I don't like it myself," he rejoined heartily. "I never wanted so badly
to say things in all my life! But you've nailed the lid on and I can't."

"They are better unsaid," she returned quickly. "Will you take that for
your cue in the future?"

"Certainly; it is for you to command," he said lightly, swinging from
his saddle to open the pasture gate for her; and so the morning ride
came to its end.

Since provincialism is by no means the exclusive distinction of the
landward bred, there was an immediate restirring of the gossip pool when
the story of Tom's befriending of Nancy Bryerson and her child got
abroad in Gordonia and among the country colonists.

In the comment of the simpler-minded Gordonia folk, the iron-master's
son had finally "made it up" with Nancy, and here the note of approval
was not wholly lacking. There were good-hearted souls to say that boys
will be boys, and to express the hope that Tom would go on from this
beginning and make an honest woman of Nancy by marrying her.

Quite naturally, the point of view of the country-house people was
different; more critical, if not less charitable. Though the social
acceptance of the Gordons, as an ancient family, as friends of the
Dabneys, and as land-holding neighbors was fairly complete, it still
lacked somewhat of the class kinship which breeds leniency and the
closed eye to the sins of its own household. But for Tom, personally, as
a distinct social improvement on honest Caleb, the welcome into the
charmed circle of Mountain View Avenue had been warm enough to make his
sudden apparent relapse into the primitive figure as an affront to the
colony. Hence, there were rods laid in pickle for the sinner, as when
Mrs. Vancourt Henniker gave the footman at Rook Hill a hint that for the
present the