“Why not, indeed, honey-bird?” said Mr. Thompson contritely. “Well, we’ll see this ‘nice boy,’ and pass judgment on him. Though, honor bright, Zalie, I think your judgment ain’t the worst in the state. For a young-un you’ve had a good deal of experience in life and I reckon you have your own way of sizing up folks.” As a result of all this, the next morning, early, in the best of moods and with a spirit for kindly adventure burning within them, a party of five started for Soco Mountain. The “sun ball,” as the mountain folk call it, was just showing a burning rim above the purple horizon when they set out, with food in their saddle bags, matches in their pockets and canteens of pure spring water on their backs. Food for the horses and raincoats were buckled to the saddles. “Short of breaking a nag’s leg,” said Haystack Thompson, complacently, “we’re safe.” The first business of the day was to go for Paralee, who was of course to be their guide. Living as she did a mile or two back of Rowantree Hall, Azalea begged that they might pass through the Rowantree estate, giving her a chance to speak a word with Mary Cecily, whose haunting story stayed with her almost constantly—all the more, perhaps, because she had been forbidden to speak of it to anyone. The detour made for the purpose was not great, and presently they were pounding up the “approach” which Mr. Rowantree so prized. But on this occasion the master of the house was not sitting upon his gallery. Instead, they found him in the “drawing-room,” clad in a snuff-covered silk dressing gown, reading from an old red-bound copy of “The Lady of the Lake” to the twins, Moira and Michael, while little Mrs. Rowantree got the breakfast. “The vocation I should have chosen,” he said to his guests after they were seated, “is teaching the young mind to expand. It is, I may say, one of the few things which really interest me.” “Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Rowantree, bustling about to serve her guests with hot coffee, “I can’t tell you what a help it is to me, having Mr. Rowantree amuse the children the way he does.” “Wouldn’t ‘instruct’ be a better word than ‘amuse,’ my dear?” asked her husband. “Oh, indeed, you do instruct as well as amuse them,” she cried loyally. “You instruct us all.” “He didn’t amuse nor instruct me none,” said Haystack Thompson when they were on their way again. “A great hulk of a man a-setting around while his little wife lugs in the firewood!” “It would be horrible, the way she works and the way he loafs,” said Keefe, “if it weren’t that she is happy. She likes to be doing things for him and the children.” “He sure is a loafer,” mused Haystack. “I know, because I’m a loafer myself and I can recognize one when I see him. But he puts on airs with his loafing, and I swan, I don’t like that. But say, he’s got cute children, ain’t he? That there little Constance said if I’d stay she’d call me ‘uncle.’” He laughed in a flattered way at the remembrance of it.