--go out West and get
a job roping steers for Bob Corbett, even if he is bone-dry."

She thought if he played any longer with that brandy glass she must cry
out, but he drained it this time and pushed it away. With an effort of
will she relaxed her tight muscles.

"I suppose I must have looked to you like a hopeless slacker," he said,
"or you wouldn't have asked Darby to send me back to work. No,--I didn't
mean to put it that way. I look like one to myself, that's all, when I
stop to think. Only you don't know how it has felt, this last six weeks,
to go on getting tighter and tighter in your head until you feel as if
you were going to burst. I went out and got drunk, once,--just plain,
deliberately boiled--in order to let off steam. It did me good, too, for
the time being."

She didn't look shocked at that as he had expected her to--gave him only
a rather wry smile and a comprehending nod. "We're all alike; that's the
trouble with us," she said. "But you will take us out to Hickory Hill,
won't you? Aunt Lucile and I. I'll promise we won't be in the way nor
make you any more work."

She saw he was hesitating and added, "At that, perhaps, I may be some
good. I could cook anyhow and I suppose I could be taught to milk a cow
and run a Ford."

He laughed at that, then said a little uncomfortably that this wasn't
what he had been thinking about. "I suppose you're counting on Graham's
being in New York. He isn't. At least, he telegraphed me that he'd be
back at Hickory Hill to-morrow morning. I knew you'd been rather keeping
away from him and I thought perhaps..."

"No, that's all right." She said it casually enough, but it drew a keen
look of inquiry from him, nevertheless. "Oh, nothing," she went on. "I
mean I haven't made up with him. Of course, I never quarreled with him
as far as that went. Only it's what I meant when I said just now that we
were all alike, father and you and I. We all get so ridiculously--tight
about things. Well, I've managed to let off steam myself."

He patted her hand approvingly. "That trip to Wyoming did you a lot of
good," he observed.--"Or something did."

"They're wonderfully easy people to live with, Olive and Bob," she said.
"They're immensely in love with each other I suppose, but without somehow
being offensive about it. And they have such a lot of fun. Olive has a
piebald cayuse, that she's taught all the _haute ecole_ tricks. He does
the statuesque poses and all the high action th