Amanda protested against the boneset but to please her mother she promised to swallow faithfully the doses of bitter tea. She thought whimsically as she drank it, "First time I knew that boneset tea is good for an aching heart. Boneset tea--it isn't that I want! I'm afraid I'm losing hold of my old faith in the ultimate triumph of sincerity and truth. Seems that men, even men like Martin Landis, don't want the old-fashioned virtues in a woman. They don't look for womanly qualities, but prefer to be amused and entertained and flattered and appealed to through the senses. Brains and heart don't seem to count. I wish I could be a butterfly! But I can never be like Isabel. When she is near I feel like a bump-on-a-log. My tongue is like lead while she chatters and holds the attention of Martin. She compels attention and crowds out everybody else. Oh, yea! as we youngsters used to say when things went wrong when we were little. Perhaps things will come out right some day. I'll just keep on taking that boneset tea!" CHAPTER XIII THE TROUBLE MAKER If "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" a man spurned in love sometimes runs a close second. One day in March Lyman Mertzheimer came home for the week-end. His first thought was to call at the Reist home. Amanda, outwardly improved--Millie said, "All because of that there boneset tea"--welcomed spring and its promise, but she could not extend to Lyman Mertzheimer the same degree of welcome. "It's that Lyman again," Millie reported after she had opened the door for the caller. "He looks kinda mad about something. What's he hangin' round here for all the time every time he gets home from school when abody can easy see you don't like him to come?" "Oh, I don't know. He just drops in. I guess because we were youngsters together." "Um, mebbe," grunted Millie wisely to herself as Amanda went to see her visitor. "I ain't blind and neither did I come in the world yesterday. That Lyman's wantin' to be Amanda's beau and she don't want him. Guess he'll stand watchin' if he gets turned down. I never did like them Mertzheimers--all so up in the air they can hardly stand still to look at abody." Lyman was standing at the window, looking out gloomily. He turned as Amanda came into the room. "I had to come, Amanda--hang it, you keep a fellow on pins and needles! You wouldn't answer my letters--" "I told you not to write." "But why? Aren't you going to change your mind? I made up my mind long ago that I'd marry you some day and a Mertzheimer is a good deal like a bulldog when it comes to hanging on." "Lyman, why hash the thing over so often? I don't care for you. Go find some nice girl who will care for you."