Instead she remarked:  “I must get to work,” and left her downcast suitor without further ceremony.

As she went about her work in the kitchen, she saw Abbey seat himself upon a log in the yard, his countenance wreathed in gloom.  He was presently joined by her brother.  Glancing out, now and then, she made a guess at the meat of their talk, and her lip curled slightly.  She saw them walk down to Abbey’s launch, and Charlie delivered an encouraging slap on Paul’s shoulder as he embarked.  Then the speedy craft tore out of the bay at a headlong gait, her motor roaring in unmuffled exhaust, wide wings of white spray arching off her flaring bows.

“The desperate recklessness of thwarted affection—­fiddlesticks!” Miss Benton observed in sardonic mood.  Her hands were deep in pie dough.  She thumped it viciously.  The kitchen and the flies and all the rest of it rasped at her nerves again.

Charlie came into the kitchen, hunted a cookie out of the tin box where such things were kept, and sat swinging one leg over a corner of the table, eying her critically while he munched.

“So you turned Paul down, eh?” he said at last.  “You’re the prize chump.  You’ve missed the best chance you’ll ever have to put yourself on Easy Street.”

CHAPTER VII

SOME NEIGHBORLY ASSISTANCE

For a week thereafter Benton developed moods of sourness, periods of scowling thought.  He tried to speed up his gang, and having all spring driven them at top speed, the added straw broke the back of their patience, and Stella heard some sharp interchanges of words.  He quelled one incipient mutiny through sheer dominance, but it left him more short of temper, more crabbedly moody than ever.  Eventually his ill-nature broke out against Stella over some trifle, and she—­being herself an aggrieved party to his transactions—­surprised her own sense of the fitness of things by retaliating in kind.

“I’m slaving away in your old camp from daylight till dark at work I despise, and you can’t even speak decently to me,” she flared up.  “You act like a perfect brute lately.  What’s the matter with you?”

Benton gnawed at a finger nail in silence.

“Hang it, I guess you’re right,” he admitted at last.  “But I can’t help having a grouch.  I’m going to fall behind on this contract, the best I can do.”

“Well,” she replied tartly.  “I’m not to blame for that.  I’m not responsible for your failure.  Why take it out on me?”

“I don’t, particularly,” he answered.  “Only—­can’t you sabe?  A man gets on edge when he works and sweats for months and sees it all about to come to nothing.”

“So does a woman,” she made pointed retort.

Benton chose to ignore the inference.