nt Terrible seemed to have said it significantly. Louise
wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his
father.

She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete
to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain. She was introduced
at that time to the Taffy King. Louise thought him rather a funny
little man, and his excitability vastly amused her.

She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her
direct way, she asked him what he meant by it.

"Don't you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?" she asked, presenting him
with a cup of tea that he did not want.

"Ha! Beg pardon!" ejaculated the candy manufacturer. "Did you think I
was watching you?"

"I _know_ you were," she rejoined. "And your disapproval is marked.
Tell me my faults. Of course, I sha'n't like you if you do; but I am
curious."

"Huh! I'd like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss
Grayling," he blurted out.

"Does he see anything particular in me?" Louise queried, her color
rising, but with a twinkle in her eye.

"He's crazy about you," said I. Tapp.

"Oh! Is _that_ why you and he disagreed?"

"It's going to cost him his home and his patrimony," the candy
manufacturer declared fiercely. "I won't have it, I tell you! I've
other plans for him. He's got to do as I say, or----"

Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of
his tirades. Positively she was laughing at him?

"Is _that_ the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked
gently. "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become
self-supporting?"

"I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp.

"Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no
doubt. It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning.
Responsibility will make a man of him."

"Ha!" snarled I. Tapp. "How about _you_? Will you marry a poor man--a
chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be
doing mighty well?"

"Oh! This is so--so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling.
"You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?"

"Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild
gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away
from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the
afternoon.

Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's