"Dis heah no-'count!" She dragged out of hiding from behind her voluminous skirts her second son, a chocolate-brown infant who rejoiced in the name of Gustavus Adolphus and was generally called "Doff." At that moment he was sobbing noisily and eyeing Val as if the boy were the Grand High Executioner of Tartary. "Yo'all tell Mistuh Val whats yo' bin a-doin'!" commanded his mother, emphasizing her order with a shake. "Ain't done nothin'," wailed Doff. "Sam, he give me de penny an' say, 'Le's hab fun.' Den Ah puts de penny in de lil' hole an' den Mammy cotch me." "Doff seems to be the victim, Lucy," Val observed. "Where's Sam?" "Ah don' know. But I'se a-goin' to fin' out!" she stated with ominous determination. "How's Ah a-goin' to git mah ironin' done when dere ain't no heat fo' de iron? Ah asks yo' dat!" "There are some fuses in the pantry and Jeems will put one in for you," Val promised. With a sniff Lucy withdrew, her fingers still hooked in the collar of her tearful son. Jeems glanced at Val as he went by the boy's cot. And Val didn't care for what he read into that glance. Had the swamper by any foul chance come to suspect Val's little plan? But it all turned out just as he had hoped. Val made that most momentous trip in four easy stages, resting on the big chair where Rupert had spent so many hours, on the bench by the window, in the first of the deck-chairs by the side of the French doors leading to the terrace, and then he reached the haven of the last deck-chair and settled down just where he had intended. And when Jeems returned there was nothing he could do but accept the fact that Val had fled the cot. "Miss Ricky won't like this," he prophesied darkly. "Nor Mr. Rupert neither. Yo' wouldn't've tried it if they'd been heah." "Oh, stop worrying. If you'd been tied to that cot the way I've been, you'd be glad to get out here, too. It's great!" The sun was warm but the afternoon shadow of an oak overhung his seat so that Val escaped the direct force of the rays. A few feet away Satan sprawled full length, giving a fine imitation of a cat that had rid himself of all nine lives, or at least of eight and a half. Never had the garden shown so rich a green. Ricky's care had sharpened the lines of the flower-beds and had set shrubs in their proper places. And the plants had repaid her with a riot of blossoms. A breeze set the gray moss to swaying from the branches of the oak. And a green grasshopper crossed the terrace in four great leaps, almost scraping Satan's ear in a fashion which might easily have been fatal to the insect. Val sighed and slipped down lower in his chair. "It's great," he murmured again. "Sure is," Jeems echoed. He dropped down cross-legged beside Val, disdaining the other chair.