It was a new world for Gordon.  He suddenly awoke.

Both the engineer and Gordon could well have spared one of the engineer’s assistants.  Ferdy Wickersham had fulfilled the promise of his boyhood, and would have been very handsome but for an expression about the dark eyes which raised a question.  He was popular with girls, but made few friends among men, and he and Mr. Rhodes had already clashed.  Rhodes gave some order which Ferdy refused to obey.  Rhodes turned on him a cold blue eye.  “What did you say?”

“I guess this is my father’s party; he’s paying the freight, and I guess I am his son.”

“I guess it’s my party, and you’ll do what I say or go home,” said Mr. Rhodes, coldly.  “Your father has no ‘son’ in this party.  I have a rodman.  Unless you are sick, you do your part of the work.”

Ferdy submitted for reasons of his own; but his eyes lowered, and he did not forget Mr. Rhodes.

The two youngsters soon fell out.  Ferdy began to give orders about the place, quite as if he were the master.  The General cautioned Gordon not to mind what he said.  “He has been spoiled a little; but don’t mind him.  An only child is at a great disadvantage.”  He spoke as if Gordon were one of a dozen children.

But Ferdy Wickersham misunderstood the other’s concession.  He resented the growing intimacy between Rhodes and Gordon.  He had discovered that Gordon was most sensitive about the old plantation, and he used his knowledge.  And when Mr. Rhodes interposed it only gave the sport of teasing Gordon a new point.

One morning, when the three were together, Ferdy began, what he probably meant for banter, to laugh at Gordon for bragging about his plantation.

“You ought to have heard him, Mr. Rhodes, how he used to blow about it.”

“I did not blow about it,” said Gordon, flushing.

Rhodes, without looking up, moved in his seat uneasily.

“Ferdy, shut up—­you bother me.  I am working.”

But Ferdy did not heed either this warning or the look on Gordon’s face.  His game had now a double zest:  he could sting Gordon and worry Rhodes.

“I don’t see why my old man was such a fool as to want such a dinged lonesome old place for, anyhow,” he said, with a little laugh.  “I am going to give it away when I get it.”

Gordon’s face whitened and flamed again, and his eyes began to snap.

“Then it’s the only thing you ever would give away,” said Mr. Rhodes, pointedly, without raising his eyes from his work.

Gordon took heart.  “Why did you come down here if you feel that way about it?”

“Because my old man offered me five thousand if I’d come.  You didn’t think I’d come to this blanked old place for nothin’, did you?  Not much, sonny.”

“Not if he knew you,” Said Mr. Rhodes, looking across at him.  “If he knew you, he’d know you never did anything for nothing, Ferdy.”