“Tell her!  Go on and tell her—­I give you leaf! that wasn’t anything anyway—­just helped you get a little idiot girl home.  What is there to that?  I never saw her before; never saw her again; didn’t have half as much to do with her as you did yourself.  She was a lot more your friend than mine; I didn’t even know her.  I guess you’ll have to get something better on me than that, before you try to boss this ranch, Laura Madison!”

That night, in bed, he wondered if he had not been perhaps a trifle rash; but the day was bright when he awoke, and no apprehension shadowed his morning face as he appeared at the breakfast table.  On the contrary, a great weight had lifted from him; clearly his defiance had been the proper thing; he had shown Laura that her power over him was but imaginary.  Hypnotized by his own words to her, he believed them; and his previous terrors became gossamer; nay, they were now merely laughable.  His own remorse and shame were wholly blotted from memory, and he could not understand why in the world he had been so afraid, nor why he had felt it so necessary to placate Laura.  She looked very meek this morning. That showed!  The strong hand was the right policy in dealing with women.  He was tempted to insane daring:  the rash, unfortunate child waltzed on the lip of the crater.

“Told Cora yet?” he asked, with scornful laughter.

“Told me what?” Cora looked quickly up from her plate.

“Oh, nothing about this Corliss,” he returned scathingly.  “Don’t get excited.”

“Hedrick!” remonstrated his mother, out of habit.

“She never thinks of anything else these days,” he retorted.  “Rides with him every evening in his pe-rin-sley hired machine, doesn’t she?”

“Really, you should be more careful about the way you handle a spoon, Hedrick,” said Cora languidly, and with at least a foundation of fact.  “It is not the proper implement for decorating the cheeks.  We all need nourishment, but it is so difficult when one sees a deposit of breakfast-food in the ear of one’s vis-a-vis.”

Hedrick too impulsively felt of his ears and was but the worse stung to find them immaculate and the latter half of the indictment unjustified.

“Spoon!” he cried.  “I wouldn’t talk about spoons if I were you, Cora-lee!  After what I saw in the library the other night, believe me, you’re the one of this family that better be careful how you `handle a spoon’!”

Cora had a moment of panic.  She let the cup she was lifting drop noisily upon its saucer, and gazed whitely at the boy, her mouth opening wide.

“Oh, no!” he went on, with a dreadful laugh.  “I didn’t hear you asking this Corliss to kiss you!  Oh, no!”

At this, though her mother and Laura both started, a faint, odd relief showed itself in Cora’s expression.  She recovered herself.

“You little liar!” she flashed, and, with a single quick look at her mother, as of one too proud to appeal, left the room.