Adelle was prettily dressed in a costume of white linen with a cloud of chiffon tied about her small hat and a parasol that she had purchased this summer in Paris, which consisted of an enormous gold lace butterfly. She was fuller in figure than before her child had come and in perfect health, though still pale. Fresh and well cared for, she was if not beautiful very attractive and dainty--all that money could make of her human person. Adelle was not given to prolonged reflection of any sort, but probably she could not help comparing her own dainty, cool, exquisitely clean person with this sweaty, sun-burned, coarse laborer in his black cotton shirt, frayed khaki trousers, and shoes that the lime had burned all color from. She must have felt a complacent sense of physical superiority to the man who was working for her, and perhaps congratulated herself that her lot in the universe had come out such a comfortable one. The mason rolled up a large stone and prepared to set it home in the bottom course. Adelle observed that he was about to crush one of the Japanese shrubs that she had been at such pains to have planted along the bank of the canon. "Look out--don't hurt that bush!" she ordered peremptorily, as she was in the habit of speaking to servants. The mason tranquilly deposited the rock full upon the shrub and proceeded to slap mortar around it and tap it home with his mallet. "Didn't you hear me?" Adelle demanded, stepping forward and pointing at the offending rock with her heavily jeweled finger. "Take it out! I don't want the shrubs killed." The mason looked up for the first time. There was a glint in his clear blue eyes as he said distinctly, without any trace of foreign accent,-- "It's got to go there!" A smile relaxed his red face, a scornful smile at the impertinence of this dainty specimen of woman-kind who thought that the foundation course of his rock wall could be disturbed for such a trivial matter as a bush. "No, it hasn't," Adelle rejoined in her imperious tone. "Fix it some other way." But the mason continued to pat his rock, looking around for the next one to lay upon it. "Do what I say!" Adelle ordered, almost angrily, irritated by the man's obstinacy. Then the mason rose, and with his trowel tapping the rock said slowly and emphatically,-- "I'm laying this wall--and I don't take no orders from you!" Whereupon, after another shot from his hard blue eyes, he turned back to the wall. At first Adelle was speechless; then she asked in a less peremptory tone,-- "Don't you know who I am?" "Yes," the mason called back over his shoulder. "You're the boss up there." He indicated the unfinished house with a wave of his trowel, and went on with his work. He seemed indifferent to the fact that he was dealing with the mistress of Highcourt, and Adelle helplessly retreated. "I will have you discharged!" she said as she walked away. The mason did not reply, and his face exhibited no emotion over this dire threat.