that's their name—said he'd busted the loony just because!"
"What did Simmons answer back?" Hunter Kinemon demanded, his coffee cup suspended.
"Nothing much; he'd law them, or something like that. The Simmonses are right spindling; they don't belong in Greenstream either." David commented: "I wouldn't have et a thing till I'd got them!" In the ruddy reflection of the lamp his pink-and-blue charm, his shy lips, resembled a pastoral divinity of boyhood. Allen laughed.
"That family, the Hatburns" He paused. "Why, they'd just mow you down with the field daisies."
David flushed with annoyance. He saw his mother studying him with the attentive concern she had first shown the day before yesterday.
"You have no call to mix in with them," Kinemon told his elder son. "Drive stage and mind your business. I'd even step aside a little from folks like that."
A sense of surprised disappointment invaded David at his father's statement. It seemed to him out of keeping with the elder's courage and determination. It, too, appeared almost spindling. Perhaps he had said it because his wife, a mere woman, was there. He was certain that Allen would not agree with such mildness. The latter, lounging back from the table, narrowed his eyes; his fingers played with the ears of his dog, Rocket. Allen gave his father a cigar and lit one himself, a present from a passenger on the stage. David could see a third in Allen's shirt pocket, and he longed passionately for the day when he would be old enough to have a cigar offered him. He longed for the time when he, like Allen, would
