"I feel that I ought to be at something right away," he said. "Besides, you remember that you told me your crops were suffering for lack of attention." She laughed again. "I wonder if I have run across a real masculine curiosity," she said. She paused on the step and faced him, and he had again that magnetic sensation of nearness to her which he had experienced at the store the day before. "You see," she continued, "out here we have to drive men to work, negroes and whites, and you speak of it as if it were a game to be played. I wonder if you really know what you are about to tackle. The sun is hot enough some days to bake a potato, and there is no sort of shade in our fields." "I don't think I shall mind the sun a bit," he said. "It is much cooler here than down in Florida where we were showing, and even there I enjoyed the days we had to work in the open more than those spent on the cars." "Oh, well, we shall see," she said, smiling again. They were at the veranda now, and she added: "Wait here and I'll see Aunt Zilla, and then we'll walk down to the cotton-field that is suffering the most and I'll give you a lesson in hoeing and weed-pulling. Then if you really are daft about working, you may start after dinner." CHAPTER V Charles sat down on the veranda and Mary turned away. Rowland was bent over his writing and did not look up, so deeply was he absorbed in what he was recording. He had a small bottle of ink on the floor at his side, into which he dipped an old pen which was so sharp at the point that it kept sticking into the cheap paper he was using. Mary reappeared very soon, now wearing her becoming hat and a great pair of cotton gloves. "Father," she said, teasingly, as she stood beside him, a hand on his threadbare coat at the shoulder, "I saw a list of men in the paper the other day that were being sent to the chain-gang for all sorts of crimes. There was a Jasper Rowland in the lot, and his son Thomas. Had you not better write to them? Perhaps they may furnish an important link in our history." Rowland looked up and smiled indulgently at her and then at Charles. "She is always poking fun at me like that," he said. "Of course there are off-shoots from the main tree like those she mentions, but I assure you, sir, that they are rare. Besides, such cases often come from families who have once been high up in the world. I am afraid that the idleness and affluence of the old slave period have left their stamp on many of our best families. I know that my own boys--" "Stop, father!" and Mary actually put her gloved hand over the old man's lips. "You must not bring Kenneth and Martin into such a classification. I know what you started to say, and you shall not to Mr. Brown. My brothers are idle, fun-loving, and wild, but they are not dishonorable."