MOTHER,” sobbed Lide, as she threw herself down on the chintz lounge without pausing to take off her hat or cape, “father has just told Ed never to come to the house nor speak to me again.”

Jim Lee and Aunt Ann got home before the lovers. The news of the broil overtook them, however. Jim Lee declared it a scandal and a scorn.

“Now you see,” he said to Aunt Ann, “what sort of ruffian the Church boy is!”

“Well, I'm glad he whipped that miserable Fan Brown,” said Aunt Ann. “He's done nothin' for ten years but come over here to Stowe Township and raise a fuss. I'm glad somebody's at last spunked up and thrashed him. I'd done it years ago if I had been a man.”

“Aunt Ann Lee!” said Jim Lee, hitting the Morgan colt a blow with the whip which set that sprightly animal almost astride the thills—“Aunt Ann, do you tell me you approve of Ed Church lickin' Fan Brown?”

“Yes, I do,” retorted Aunt Ann, stoutly, “and so will Lide. If you imagine, father, a woman finds fault with a man because he'll fight other men you don't know the sex.”

Jim Lee moaned. Absolutely! for the first time in his life Aunt Ann had shocked him. Not another word was spoken by Jim Lee all the way home.

Aunt Ann went into the house when they arrived, while Jim Lee remained to put up the Morgan colt. He was busy in the barn when Ed and Lide drove into the yard.

“Father came up to Ed,” sobbed Lide, as she lay on the lounge, “and called him a brawler and a drunkard, and said he'd got to keep away from me.”

“What did Ed say?” asked Aunt Ann, as she sat down by her daughter and began, with kind hands, to take off her hat and cape. Every touch was full of motherly love and tenderness.

“Oh! Ed didn't say much,” said Lide, giving way to long-drawn sighs; a fashion of dead swell following the storm of sobs. “He said he'd marry me whether father was willing or not. Then he drove away.”

Aunt Ann smiled.

“I guess Ed Church is pretty high strung,” said Aunt Ann, “but that won't hurt him any.”

Jim Lee came in at that moment, looking a bit sheepish and guilty; but over it all an atmosphere of victory.

“That Church boy will stay away now, I guess!” said Jim Lee, as he got the bootjack and began pulling off his boots.

“Jim Lee, you're an awful fool!” observed Aunt Ann with the air of a sibyl settling all things. “You're the biggest numbskull in Stowe Township!”

“Why?” asked Jim Lee.

He was disturbed because Aunt Ann addressed him by his full name. Experience had taught him that defeat ever followed hard on the heels of his full name, when Aunt Ann made use of it.

“Never mind why!” said Aunt Ann.

And not another word could Jim Lee get from her.