“Boys, learn to obey promptly,” he said; “saves a sight o’ trouble.  It’s better in the family ’n a melojeon.  It’s got to come sooner or later, and the sooner the better for you.  The difference between me and most married men around here is that they lies about it, and I don’t.  I know I belongs to Eliza.  She owns me, but then she treats me well.  I’m sort o’ meek when she’s around, but then I make up for it by bein’ so durned independent when I’m away from home.  Besides, it’s a good deal better to be ordered about by somebody as keers for you than not to have anybody in the world as keers whether you come or stay.”

Besides Mrs. Rawson, there were in the family a widowed daughter, Mrs. Tripper, a long, pale, thin woman, with sad eyes, who had once been pretty, and her daughter Euphronia, already referred to, who, in right of being very pretty, was the old squire’s idol and was never thwarted in anything.  She was, in consequence, a spoiled little damsel, self-willed, very vain, and as susceptible as a chameleon.  The ease with which she could turn her family around her finger gave her a certain contempt for them.  At first she was quite enamoured of the young engineer; but Mr. Rhodes was too busy to give any thought to a girl whom he regarded as a child, and she turned her glances on Gordon.  Gordon also was impervious to her charms.  He was by no means indifferent to girls; several little damsels who attended St. Martin’s Church had at one time or another been his load-stars for a while; but he was an aristocrat at heart, and held himself infinitely above a girl like Miss Euphronia.

Ferdy Wickersham had no such motives for abstaining from a flirtation with the young girl as those which restrained Rhodes and Keith.

Euphronia had not at first taken much notice of him.  She had been inclined to regard Ferdy Wickersham with some disfavor as a Yankee; but when the other two failed her, Wickersham fell heir to her blandishments.  Her indifference to him had piqued him and awakened an interest which possibly he might not otherwise have felt.  He had seen much of the world for a youngster, and could make a good show with what he knew.  He could play on the piano, and though the aged instrument which the old countryman had got at second-hand for his granddaughter gave forth sounds which might have come from a tinkling cymbal, yet Ferdy played with a certain dash and could bring from it tunes which the girl thought very fine.  The two soon began to be so much together that both Rhodes and Keith fell to rallying Ferdy as to his conquest.  Ferdy accepted it with complacency.

“I think I shall stay here while you are working up in the mountains,” he said to his chief as the time drew near for them to leave.

“You will do nothing of the kind.  I promised to take you with me, and I will take you dead or alive.”

A frown began on the youngster’s face, but passed away quickly, and in its place came a look of covert complacency.