“Why, Tom!  Why does the lawn look like this?”

“Like what?” inquired Tom.

“Why, this—­all weeds and briers, and the paths overgrown?” and as Betty surveyed the unkempt waste that had once been a lawn, a little frown fixed itself on her smooth brow.

Mr. Ware rubbed his chin reflectively with the back of his hand.

“That sort of thing looked all right, Bet,” he said, “but it kept five or six of the best hands out of the fields right at the busiest time of the year.”

“Haven’t I slaves enough?” she asked.

The dull color crept into Ware’s cheeks.  He hated her for that “I!” So she was going to come that on him, was she?  And he’d worked himself like a horse to bring in more land.  Why, he’d doubled the acreage in cotton and corn in the last four years!  He smothered his sense of hurt and indignation.

“Don’t you want to see the crops, Bet?  Let me order a team and show you about, you couldn’t walk over the place in a week!” he urged.

The girl shook her head and moved swiftly down the path that led from terrace to terrace to the margin of the bayou.  At the first terrace she paused.  All below was a wilderness of tangled vines and brush.  She faced Tom rather piteously.  What had been lost was more than he could possibly understand.  Her father had planned these grounds which he was allowing a riotous second growth to swallow up.

“It’s positively squalid!” cried Betty, with a little stamp of her foot.

Ware glanced about with dull eyes.  The air of neglect and decay which was everywhere visible, and which was such a shock to Betty, had not been reached in a season, he was really convinced that the place looked pretty much as it had always looked.

“I’ll tell you, Betty, I’m busy this morning; you poke about and see what you want done and we’ll do it,” he said, and made a hasty retreat to his office, a little brick building at the other side of the house.

Betty returned to the porch and seating herself on the top step with her elbows on her knees and her chin sunk in the palms of her hands, gazed about her miserably enough.  She was still seated there when half an hour later Charley Norton galloped up the drive from the highroad.  Catching sight of her on the porch he sprang from the saddle, and, throwing his reins to a black boy, hurried to her side.

“Inspecting your domain, Betty?” he asked, as he took his place near her on the step.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Charley—­or at least prepare me for this?” she asked, almost tearfully.

“How was I to know, Betty?  I haven’t been here since you went away, dear—­what was there to bring me?  Old Tom would make a cow pasture out of the Garden of Eden, wouldn’t he—­a beautiful, practical, sordid soul he is!”

“What am I going to do, Charley?”

“Keep after him until you get what you want, it’s the only way to manage Tom that I know of.”