ers. See here, I want lunch for two at
one o'clock." The directions that followed were explicit and given with
a particularity that made Sam wonder. "Order my trap," he finally
directed.

Cresswell went out on the high-pillared porch until the trap appeared.

"Oh, Harry! I wanted to go in the trap--take me?" coaxed his sister.

"Sorry, Sis, but I'm going the other way."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Cresswell, easily, as she settled down
to another chocolate. Cresswell did not take the trouble to reply.

Miss Taylor was on her morning walk when she saw him spinning down the
road, and both expressed surprise and pleasure at the meeting.

"What a delightful morning!" said the school-teacher, and the glow on
her face said even more.

"I'm driving round through the old plantation," he explained; "won't you
join me?"

"The invitation is tempting," she hesitated; "but I've got just oodles
of work."

"What! on Saturday?"

"Saturday is my really busy day, don't you know. I guess I could get
off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith."

He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her
inclinations lay was quite clear to him.

"It--it would be decidedly the proper thing," he murmured, "and we
could, of course, invite Miss--"

She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:

"It's quite unnecessary; she'll think I have simply gone for a long
walk." And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the
perfume of the pines.

Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old
plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed.
Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a
pretty girl gay with new-found companionship--all this is apt to make a
morning worth remembering.

They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of
ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts
of past years' cotton standing straggling and weather-worn. Long,
straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming,
struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the
sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.

"They're beginning to plough up the land for the cotton-crop," he
explained.

"What a wonderful crop it is!" Mary had fallen pensive.

"Yes, indeed--if only we could get decent returns for it."

"Why, I thought it was a most valuable crop." She t