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Rh one of the town-bred girls from Grange's and Andree had taken her place. This arrangement appeared satisfactory to all concerned until Tempest came in from a three days' trip to Lower Landing and found Andree bearing the little oval dishes with their ill-cooked food over the big bare room to a noisy tableful of freighters.

Andree had not forgotten how he halted inside the door, straight and tall in his uniform, and looked at her with eyes as straight—and more stern than she cared to see. For Tempest was just now the North Star in her universe, and her compass swung to him as naturally as it would by and by swing to another. She flinched from his glance as though it had been a whip. Then her tread grew stately and her eyes cold, and she moved among the burring talk and the rough laughter and the clatter of plates and knives like the handmaid of the gods which Tempest would have her be. He spoke low when she brought the food to his table where he sat alone.

"What do they mean by letting you do this?" he asked.

"Gertrude got married yesterday," she said. "And I do not mind."

"But I mind," he said. And because it was the first time he had taken that tone with her she went away, half-flattered, half-afraid.

He was saying the same thing now, as he shed the last spruce-branches on the snow and thrust past the long poking fiddle-head to come near her.

"And I won't have it," he ended sternly. "I had to turn a man out last night. If he had spoken to you"

Andree looked away. She knew dimly that it would not please Tempest to hear how well she could take care of herself when she chose.

"But it is so often that they are good boys," she said.

"I know. They're usually all right. But I hate to have you wait on them. And I hate to have you wait on me." He came nearer yet. "I wonder if you guess how I feel when I have to sit still and let you wait on me," he said.

She heard the note in his voice. But she could not read it. She saw his eyes. But she did not know what they said.

"I—don't understand," she told him.