her baby-cab when I wasn't very big myself. When I went away to college
she was a little roly-poly beauty of ten or eleven, maybe. Wasn't she
named for her father's rich sister, Mrs. Darby? I never knew that Mrs.
Darby's name was Geraldine."

"It wasn't; it was Jerusha; and Jim's name was Jeremiah; and Lesa's was
plain Melissa," York explained. "But Lesa changed all of their names to
make them sound more romantic. Romance was Lesa's strong suit. She
called her daughter 'Jerry,' to please Mrs. Darby, but the child was
christened Geraldine--never Jerusha. Lesa wouldn't stand for that."

"And now what does this Geraldine want from my respected brother?" Laura
inquired, leaning back on the cushions of her chair to listen.

York's face was hidden by the darker shadows of the porch, but his
sister knew by his grave tone, when he spoke again, that something
deeper than a business transaction lay back of this message from
Philadelphia.

"It's an old story, Laura. The story of parents rearing a child in
luxury and then dying poor and leaving this child unprovided for and
unfitted to provide for herself. Jim Swaim was as clear-headed as his
wife was soft-hearted and idealizing. Every angle of his was a right
angle, even if he did grow a bit tight-fisted sometimes for his family's
sake. But a leech of a fellow, a sort of relative by marriage, got his
claws into Jim some way, and in the end got him, root and branch. Then
Lesa contracted pneumonia and died after a short illness. And just when
Jim was most needed to hold up his business interests and tide things
over, as well as look after his daughter, they found him dead in his
office one morning. Heart failure, the doctors said, the kind that gets
a brain-fagged business man. The estate has been in litigation for two
years. Now it is settled, and all that is left for Geraldine is a claim
her father held out here in the Sage Brush Valley. She thinks she is
going to live on that. She came in on the afternoon train and is
stopping at the Commercial Hotel. I called to see her a minute on my way
home. That was why I ate a cold dinner this evening. I asked her to come
here at once, but she refused. Some one from the hotel will bring her
over later. That means Ponk, of course. He's the whole Commercial Hotel
'and Gurrage.' We must have her here to stay with us awhile, of course."

"York Macpherson!" his sister fairly gasped. "Coming to call this
evening! Will stay with us awhile, o