"Has Brant gone out to work?" were the young man's first words.

"I think he's not yet up," the Colonel's look of anxiety deepened. "You
don't want to see him for--for anything?"

"No," Bob smiled. "And Dale--er--Dawson?"

"Left before I came downstairs, sir," the Colonel answered. "What is it,
Bob? Tell me!"

Bob's eyes passed the Colonel and rested on the drive up which he had
just come. With an attempt at casualness he said:

"That Potter fellow did more yesterday than I guessed."

There was no alteration in the old gentleman's attitude; he did not sit
bolt upright in his chair, or grasp its arms until his knuckles showed
white, but simply said:

"Tell me!"

"She went straight to her room when we got home," Bob continued in a
more excited undertone. "Ann followed, of course, and found her
desperately nervous, half crying with rage." He then related practically
what had happened at the school, concluding: "Aunt Timmie slept in her
room all night, and when Jane asks her to do that you know she's upset."

They heard Uncle Zack moving inside the hall, and the Colonel called
him:

"Have Tempest brought up," he said, and to Bob: "I shall be right down,
sir."

Uncle Zack came quickly back to the porch, for his eyes had seen things
which electrified him. This old darky, shriveled up with his burden of
toil and years, who had been the Colonel's servant, adviser, and
comforter since both of them were boys, was too truly a member of the
family to permit anything to occur without pushing well into its
secrets. Until a few years ago, his wife, Aunt Timmie, had divided this
welcome office with him; but after the wedding, and about the time when
Bob's household began to walk on tiptoe in fearful and happy expectancy,
old Timmie left, bag and baggage, for the younger home, where she had
thereafter remained as nurse, comforter, scolder and chief director of
the new heir, as well as of the premises in general. The Colonel having
lately suggested that Mr. Hart, Jr.,--or Bip, for short--being now six
years of age, was too big for her to manage, had called forth an
eloquent outburst, which concluded with the terse observation: "If I
could handle his Pappy an' Mammy, an' his Gran'pappy an' Gran'mammy
befoh him, an' all de Mays an' Harts borned dese las' hund'ed yeahs,
how-cum I ain' able to handle him?" And that had settled it, so each
household gloried in the possession of one of these rare servants,
spoiled by love, mell