she said. "They
were rather expensive, but two were mated, and they call very well when
tied out separated. Do you think it was too expensive?" she added
timidly, showing him the bill.

"No," he said, smiling. "I think it's all right. Mated decoys are what
we need, and you can wing-tip a dozen before you get one that will talk
at the right time."

"That is true," she said eagerly. "We try our best to keep up the decoys
and have nothing but talkers. Our geese are nearly all right, and our
ducks are good, but our swans are _so_ vexing! They seem to be such
fools, and they usually behave like silly cygnets. You will see
to-morrow."

While she was speaking, her brother came quietly into the room with an
open book in his hands, and Marche, glancing at it curiously, saw that
it was a Latin grammar.

"Where do you go to school, Jim?" he asked.

"Father teaches me."

Marche, rather astonished at the calibre of his superintendent,
glanced from the boy to his sister in silence. The girl's head
remained steadily lowered over the papers on her knee, but he saw her
foot swinging in nervous rhythm, and he was conscious of her silent
impatience at something or other, perhaps at the interruption in their
business discussion.

[Illustration: "'Well,' he said pleasantly, 'what comes next, Miss
Herold?'"]

"Well," he said pleasantly, "what comes next, Miss Herold?"

She handed him a list of the decoys. He read it gravely, nodded, and
returned it.

"You may count them for yourself to-morrow," she said.

"Not at all. I trust you entirely," he replied laughingly.

Then they went over the remaining matters, the condition of the pine
timber, the repairs to the boats and blinds and stools, items for snaps,
swivels, paint, cement, wire, none of which interested Marche as much as
the silent boy reading his Latin grammar by the smoky lamp interested
him, or the boy's sister bending over the papers on her knee, pencil
poised in her pretty, weather-roughened hand.

"I sent the shells from New York by express," he said. "Did they
arrive?"

"I left two hundred in your room," said the boy, looking up.

"Oh, thank you, Jim." And, turning to his sister, who had raised her
head, inquiringly, "I suppose somebody will call me at the screech of
dawn, won't they?"

"Do you know the new law?" she asked.

"No. I don't like laws, anyway," he said smilingly.

She smiled, too, gathering up her papers preparatory to departure.
"Nobody is a