"Well, then, I'll have to do it with one hand," Charles was mortified to overhear. "This is his first day, Zilla. He has not set in yet. Until he does he is a guest under our roof." "Well, let 'im set in now, den," Zilla cried. "He ain't de preacher; he ain't de school-teacher; he ain't nuffen but er rousterbout circus man." Charles heard the sound of receding footsteps toward the rear of the house, and the soft slur of the old man's tread as he returned. "Aunt Zilla appears to be busy back there," he said, blandly. "We'll walk around to the well and draw it ourselves, if you don't mind." Deeply chagrined, Charles accepted the offer. The well was at the kitchen door and Charles lowered the bucket into it. As he was drawing it up Aunt Zilla, who was a portly yellow woman of forty, came out with a tin dipper. It looked as if she partially regretted her show of temper, for she had a softened look as she extended the dipper to her master. Rowland filled it and offered it to Charles, but he declined to drink first, and as a matter of mere form Rowland drank and then refilled the dipper. "Young miss is ercomin'," Zilla said, turning toward the front. "I wonder is she done hear sumpin' erbout de boys? Lawd! Lawd! what dey bofe comin' to?" As she disappeared around the corner Rowland stroked his white goatee and smiled wearily. "We have to handle her with care," he said. "She is the only help we have now, and she threatens to leave us every day. She is getting tyrannical. They are all like that." They were returning to the veranda when Mary came in at the gate. "Put the table things on the line to dry, Aunt Zilla; there is no time to lose, if they are to be ironed to-day," Charles heard her ordering, in a hurried and yet kind tone. He noted that she wore a somewhat simpler dress than the day before, a plain checked gingham, but it was most becoming, and her hat, a great wide-brimmed one, woven from the inner husks of corn without adornment of any sort, added to her rare, flushed beauty. Being in the shade of the house, she took the hat off and held it in one hand while she offered the other to Charles. "So you didn't fail us," she said, but she seemed now to force the exquisite smile which the day before had been so spontaneous. "I was almost sure you'd come when I was talking to you at the store, but when I got home and saw how desolate our place looked I began to fear it would bore one who had traveled about a great deal, as you must have done. Well, if you don't like it, I'll excuse you. It looks like things simply will not go right, somehow." Her face had fallen into pensive solemnity, her pretty lip was drawn tight across her fine teeth. "But I do like it very, very much," Charles heard himself stammering. "I am only afraid that I shall not be able to give thorough satisfaction with my work." "Oh, that will be all right!" Mary smiled a stiff smile again, while a far-away look lay in her eyes.