Lucy sprang up, and seizing a brush, began to work at her hair with a will, until the colour returned to her cheeks and the glossy dark locks wreathed her crown in a way to add a fascinating air of maturity to her arch face. Then, picking out the most dashing waist she had brought, having merely chosen her plainest clothing, she adjusted it over a long, flowing skirt and stood surveying herself for a moment, saying half aloud, “I will look at Milor Stead, widower; if he is a good possession for little Brooke, so be it, I stand aside; if not, I interfere!” and then a softened expression followed the one that Brooke’s semi-challenge had called forth, and she added, with a sigh, “How I wish Brooke could have some one’s whole, first, fresh love, be he rich or poor! She would keep it and live and die for it, and not mar it with a selfish thought. I wonder if Charlie is right and that Tom Brownell is trying to avoid me? Bah! but it is really a handicap for a woman to have a rich father; the money lures those she dislikes, and gives the others blind staggers, and they bolt in the wrong direction.” Two minutes later, Lucy, wholly radiant, was pushing Adam Lawton’s chair in to supper, and insisting that she was sure that he recognized her, even though he could not speak her name, while the Cub changed seats so as to be next her at table, and Pam insisted upon sharing the somewhat narrow chair by wedging herself between Lucy and the straight, high back. CHAPTER XVII LOCKS AND KEYS Ten days passed, and June was urging the growth of flower and leaf with ardent breath. Even in the hill country, with its cool nights and winds that rush down the river valley, the days were sultry, and August lent her younger sister electric batteries for her relief; and almost every afternoon the soft, rounded summer clouds that seemed to flock about Windy Hill, like pasturing sheep, were put to flight by the dun-edged thunder scud with its whips of lightning. Robert Stead had now gone his way to the north-west at his friend’s request, the work indoors and out had settled with an even and soothing monotony over the West farm, while the Sign of the Fox and its fame were already relieving Brooke’s anxiety as to the immediate future. As Lucy paced to and fro along the neatly gravelled walks of the old-fashioned garden, where the Cub was engaged in “brushing” the long line of sweet peas, a vocation requiring a knack that he did not possess, it seemed to her that two months, instead of two weeks, had passed since her coming. Not that she was in any way bored or discontented, rather did it seem as if she had always been a part of the household and living her normal life, while the revelation, indoors and out, of work done by personal service, instead of by money proxy, had given her active brain much food for thought of a new though baffling order.