"O. K. I'm trying to figure you out. If you weren't so tall I'd guess you were Phyllis Kirkwood."
"That's all of my name," replied Phil. "I remember you now, but you must have been away a long time. I hadn't heard that anybody was living over there."
"The family haven't been here much since I was a kid. They have moved out their things. What's left is mine."
Mr. Frederick Holton turned and extended the hand that held his hat with a comprehensive gesture. There was a tinge of irony in his tone that Phil did not miss. "What's left here—house, barn, and land—belongs to me. The town house has been sold and Charlie and Ethel have come out here to say good-bye to the farm."
"Oh!"
This time Phil's "Oh" connoted mild surprise, polite interest, and faint curiosity.
The wind rustled the leaves among the corn-shocks. The moon gazed benevolently upon the barn, tolerant of the impertinence of man-made light and a gayety that was wholly inconsonant with her previous knowledge of this particular bit of landscape.
Fred Holton did not amplify his last statement, so Phil's "Oh," in so far as it expressed curiosity as to the disposition of the Holton territory and Mr. Frederick Holton's relation to it, seemed destined to no immediate satisfaction.
"I must skip," remarked Phil; though she did not, in fact, skip at once.
"Staying over at your grandfather's?" The young man's arm pointed toward the north and the venerable farmhouse long occupied by tenants of the Montgomerys.