“Oh!  I wish you wouldn’t,” murmured Louise.  “I’m glad Betty and I saved him.  Mrs. Gallup did quite as much as I——­”

“We know all that,” Prue broke in quickly.  “And daddy’s made it up to her.”

“Yes.  I know.  He was very liberal,” Louise agreed.

“But mercy!” cried Prue.  “He can’t send you a check, Miss Grayling.  And we all do feel deeply grateful to you.  Ford is an awfully good sort of a chap—­for a brother.”

Louise laughed outright at that.  “I suppose, though never having had a brother, I can appreciate his good qualities fully as much as you girls,” she said.  “Will he be long away?”

“That we don’t know,” Marian said slowly.  Louise had asked the question so lightly that Miss Tapp could not be sure there was any real interest behind it.  But Cecile, who had alighted to crank up, whispered to Louise: 

“You know what he’s gone away for?  No?  To get a job!  He and father have disagreed dreadfully.”

“Oh!  I am so sorry,” murmured Louise.  She would not ask any further questions.  She was troubled, however, by this information, for L’Enfant Terrible seemed to have said it significantly.  Louise wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his father.

She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain.  She was introduced at that time to the Taffy King.  Louise thought him rather a funny little man, and his excitability vastly amused her.

She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her direct way, she asked him what he meant by it.

“Don’t you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?” she asked, presenting him with a cup of tea that he did not want.

“Ha!  Beg pardon!” ejaculated the candy manufacturer.  “Did you think I was watching you?”

“I know you were,” she rejoined.  “And your disapproval is marked.  Tell me my faults.  Of course, I sha’n’t like you if you do; but I am curious.”

“Huh!  I’d like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss Grayling,” he blurted out.

“Does he see anything particular in me?” Louise queried, her color rising, but with a twinkle in her eye.

“He’s crazy about you,” said I. Tapp.

“Oh!  Is that why you and he disagreed?”

“It’s going to cost him his home and his patrimony,” the candy manufacturer declared fiercely.  “I won’t have it, I tell you!  I’ve other plans for him.  He’s got to do as I say, or——­”

Something in the girl’s face halted him at the very beginning of one of his tirades.  Positively she was laughing at him?

“Is that the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?” Louise asked gently.  “If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become self-supporting?”

“I’ll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!” threatened I. Tapp.