Ford was busy at work which appealed to the best of him.

He was thrown into companionship with men who perforce lived cleanly and naturally, and with Ches Mason, who was his friend.

At meals he sometimes gave thought to Mrs.Kate, and frequently to Josephine.

The first he admired impersonally for her housewifely skill, and smiled at secretly for her purely feminine outlook upon life and her positive views upon subjects of which she knew not half the alphabet.

He had discovered that Mason did indeed refrain from smoking in the house because she discountenanced tobacco; and since she had a talent for making a man uncomfortably aware of her disapproval by certain wordless manifestations of scorn for his weaknesses, Ford also took to throwing away his cigarette before he crossed the bridge on his way to her domain.