“It’s horrid to have to assert one’s self!”

“You’ll have to with Tom—­you must, Betty—­he won’t understand anything else.”  Then he added:  “Let’s look around and see what’s needed, a season or two of care will remedy the most of this neglect.  Just make Tom put a lot of hands in here with brush-hooks and axes and soon you’ll not know the place!”

Norton spent the day at Belle Plain; and though he was there on his good behavior as the result of an agreement they had reached on board The Naiad, he proposed twice.

“My intentions are all right, Betty,” he assured her in extenuation.  “But I’ve the worst memory imaginable.  Oh, yes, the lower terrace is badly gullied, but it’s no great matter, it can be fixed with a little work.”

It was soon plain to Betty that Tom’s ideals, if he possessed any, had not led him in the direction of what he termed display.  His social impulse had suffered atrophy.  The house was utterly disorganized; there was a dearth of suitable servants.  Those she had known were gone—­sold, she learned.  Tom explained that there had been no need for them since he had lived pretty much in his office, what had been the use in keeping darkies standing about doing nothing?  He had got rid of those show niggers and put their price in husky field hands, who could be made to do a day’s work and not feel they were abused.

But Tom was mistaken in his supposition that Betty would soon tire of Belle Plain.  She demanded men, and teams, and began on the lawns.  This interested and fascinated her.  She was out at sun-up to direct her laborers.  She had the advantage of Charley Norton’s presence and advice for the greater part of each day in the week, and Sundays he came to look over what had been accomplished, and, as Tom firmly believed, to put that little fool up to fresh nonsense.  He could have booted him!

As the grounds took shape before her delighted eyes, Betty found leisure to institute a thorough reformation indoors.  A number of house servants were rescued from the quarters and she began to instruct them in their new duties.

Tom was sick at heart.  The little fool would cripple the place.  It gave him acute nausea to see the gangs at work about the lawns; it made him sicker to pass through the house.  There were five or six women in the kitchen now—­he was damned if he could see what they found to do—­there was a butler and a page.  Betty had levied on the stables for one of the best teams to draw the family carriage, which had not been in use since her mother’s death; there was a coachman for that, and another little monkey to ride on the rumble and hop down and open gates.  This came of sending girls away to school—­they only learned foolishness.

And those niggers about the house had to be dressed for their new work; the butler, a cracking plow-hand he was, wore better clothes than he—­Tom—­did.  No wonder he was sick;—­and waste!  Tom knew all about that when the bills began to come in from Memphis.  Why, that pink-faced chit, he always referred to her in his own mind now as a pink-faced chit, was evolving a scheme of life that would cost eight or ten thousand dollars a year to maintain, and she was talking of decorators for the house, either from New Orleans or Philadelphia, and new furniture from top to bottom.