“You never can tell, Steb. There’s lawyers and lawyers. Some of ’em could drive a coach unscorched through hell.” “Well, I hope young Gordon don’t get any of it—his aunt’s money, I mean. He’s a bad one, Gordon is! Remember how he almost killed the roan colt last time he was here? Murphy wasn’t goin’ to stand by and have no horse abused like that. I seen it all. When he interfered, Gord went for him with his quirt. If the Missus hadn’t showed up when she did, Mike’d busted the young roughneck wide open.” Murphy was the Theddon coachman. “She’s provin’ she’s a bit of an angel,” observed Murfins. “I’d hate to see her get the short end of it.” He meant Madelaine. They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then Stebbins remarked: “Wonder how Gord’ll behave next time he comes to visit here and finds the princess his aunt’s got out of an asylum.” “Not an asylum, Steb. An asylum’s a crazy house where they store insane lunatics that ain’t quite right in their heads!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII PRAYER I Bernie Gridley soon acquired a girl chum, a boy-baiting little blond with a profile like the face on an old-style quarter-dollar. Her name was Elinore Carver. As I was Nathan Forge’s squire, Elinore became my Heart’s Desire. Which may read like “peanut” poetry but which really did possess so much poetry at the time that I am allowing the euphony to remain. Thus did our quartette facilitate the course of true love, conspire to make it run smoothly and hoodwink our parents considered as being meddlesome outsiders on general principle. Family catechisms in the evening as to our associations during the day probed in vain for any milk-and-water assignations so long as the parties on all sides could swear truthfully that they had traveled during the shining hours with those of their own sex and any propinquity came about in pairs and purely by accident. Although Bernie’s mother did her worst to keep her offspring an exasperating little prig, still in her heart the Dresden Doll was a daughter of Eve. And ere long it was accepted in school that she and Nathan had been called and by one another chosen.