George hadn't guessed that his reputation as a horseman had travelled as far as the big house. The superintendent explained that it had, and that, living at home, merely helping out for the summer, he would be quite apart from the ordinary men around the stables. His parents sensed a threat. They begged him to accept. "We've got to do as Old Planter wants at the start or he'll put us out, and we're too old to make another home." So George went with his head up, telling himself he was doing Planter a favour; but he didn't like it, and almost at once commenced to plan to get away, if he could, without hurting his parents. Then Sylvia, just home from her last year at school, came into the stable toward the end of his day's work. Her overpowering father was with her, and her brother, Lambert, who was about George's age. She examined interestedly the horse reserved for her, and one or two others of which she was envious. George wanted to stare at her. He had only glimpsed her casually and at a distance in summers gone by. Now she was close, and he knew he had never seen anything to match her slender, adolescent figure, or her finely balanced face with its intolerant eyes and its frame of black hair. "But," he heard her say to her father in a flexible contralto voice, "I don't care to bother you or Lambert every time I want to ride." An argument, unintelligible to George, flowed for a moment. Then Old Planter's tones, bass and authoritative, filled the stable. "Come here, young Morton!" George advanced, not touching his cap, to remind the big man that there was a difference between him and the other stable men, and that he didn't like that tone. "You are a very dependable horseman," the great millionaire said. "I can trust you. When Miss Sylvia wants to ride alone you will go with her and see that she has no accidents. During your hours here you will be entirely at her disposal." Instead of arousing George's anger that command slightly thrilled him. "So you're Morton," Sylvia said, indifferently. "I shall expect you always to be convenient." He ventured to look at last, pulling off his cap. "You can depend on it," he said, a trifle dazed by her beauty. She went out. Her father and her brother followed, like servitors of a sort themselves. George had no sense of having allowed his position there to be compromised. He only realized that he was going to see that lovely creature every day, would be responsible for her safety, would have a chance to know her. "A peach!" a groom whispered. "You're lucky, Georgie boy." George shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe so." Yet he agreed. She was a peach, and he took no pains to conceal his appraisal from his parents that evening. "Seen Old Planter's daughter yet?" His father, a drooping, tired figure in the dusk of the little porch, nodded. "I haven't," his mother called from the kitchen. "Is she as pretty as she was last summer?" "Pretty!" he scoffed. "Who was the prettiest woman in the world?"