xactly sure that he
hadn't drawn me out rather more than I drew him. Anyhow, the interest
seemed to be mutual, and that flattered me a bit. It's perfectly evident
that he's a great student of affairs."

They finished the work at a gallop. Georgiana slipped off her pinafore,
and Stuart, who had insisted on waiting for her, hung it upon its
accustomed nail.

"Do you suppose pretty cousin ever wore one?" he queried.

CHAPTER VII

SNOWBALLS

Mr. E. C. Jefferson laid down his pen, ran his hand through his heavy
brown hair, rumpling it still more than it had been rumpled
before--which is saying considerable--and stretched his legs under the
table upon which he had been writing steadily since half-past one
o'clock. He heaved a mighty breath, stretched his arms to match his
legs, looked round at his windows, which faced the west, and so had kept
him supplied with strong light longer than windows on any other side of
the house would have done, and took out his watch.

Nearly half-past four. Time, and more than time, for his late afternoon
tramp. He set the piles of sheets before him in order, sheathed his pen
and put it in his pocket, and rose from his place, the light of
achievement in his eye, but crampiness and fatigue in all his limbs.

As he approached his windows to ascertain what kind of weather was to be
found outside, he became aware of sounds which would indicate that some
event of activity and hilarity was going on below. He realized now that
he had been hearing these sounds--quite without hearing them, after the
fashion of the absorbed workman--for the last half-hour. Looking out, he
beheld an interesting affair in full swing.

At each end of the side yard the heavy snow which a late March storm had
brought overnight had been shovelled and manipulated into the semblance
of a fort such as lads are wont to make. Between these two entrenchments
a battle was raging. But it was no lads who held the places of the
combatants. Instead, as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from
behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit,
its dark head half shielded by a scarlet toboggan cap very much awry. A
mittened hand flung a snowball with strength and precision straight into
the opposite fort, and the assailant immediately dodged down behind the
embankment.

From the opposing stronghold then cautiously appeared a head snugly
bound in a blue scarf, from which locks of fair hair esca