“Everything that cousin Josey planted with her own hands must be took up carefully and sent back—­even though it’s killin’ me to part with it,” quoted Wyngate unblushingly, as he slouched along on the other side.

Miss Wells’s eyes glared at them, though her mouth still smiled ravishingly.  “I’m sure I’m troubling you.”

In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully laid together; indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few that she had not indicated.

“Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy that’s coming down the hill?” she said, pointing to a buggy driven by a small boy which was slowly approaching the gate.  The men tenderly lifted the uprooted plants, and proceeded solemnly, Miss Wells bringing up the rear, towards the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily lounging.

They passed out first.  Miss Wells lingered for an instant, and then advancing her beautiful but audacious face within an inch of Jackson’s, hissed out, “Make-believe! and hypocrite!”

“Cross-patch and sauce-box!” returned Jackson readily, still under the malign influence of his boyish past, as she flounced away.

Presently he heard the buggy rattle away with his persecutor.  But his partners still lingered on the road in earnest conversation, and when they did return it was with a singular awkwardness and embarrassment, which he naturally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish weakness in succumbing to the girl’s demands.

But he was a little surprised when Dexter Rice approached him gloomily.  “Of course,” he began, “it ain’t no call of ours to interfere in family affairs, and you’ve a right to keep ’em to yourself, but if you’d been fair and square and above board in what you got off on us about this per—­”

“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Wells.

“Well—­callin’ her a ‘red-haired gal.’”

“Well—­she is a red-haired girl!” said Wells impatiently.

“A man,” continued Rice pityingly, “that is so prejudiced as to apply such language to a beautiful orphan—­torn with grief at the loss of a beloved but d——­d misconstruing parent—­merely because she begs a few vegetables out of his potato patch, ain’t to be reasoned with.  But when you come to look at this thing by and large, and as a fa’r-minded man, sonny, you’ll agree with us that the sooner you make terms with her the better.  Considerin’ your interest, Jacksey,—­let alone the claims of humanity,—­we’ve concluded to withdraw from here until this thing is settled.  She’s sort o’ mixed us up with your feelings agin her, and naturally supposed we object to the color of her hair! and bein’ a penniless orphan, rejected by her relations”—­

“What stuff are you talking?” burst in Jackson.  “Why, you saw she treated you better than she did me.”