softer to his artistic nature than the struggling up-climb with
his real gift. This old lady won't last forever. Her disinherited niece
won't want to work at teaching forever. The waiting clerk will come
after the heir apparent just when she is most tired of the Sage Brush
and the things thereof, and--they will live tamely ever after on the
aunt's money. Do you see what you are up against, Joe? Don't waste
energy on a dream--with nothing to show for your labor at last but debt
and possible failure, and the beautiful Sage Brush Valley turned to a
Sodom before your eyes."

"Whenever you are ready I'll sign up the lease," was Joe's only reply.

So the transaction was completed in silence.

III

JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE

XIII

HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON

New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of
exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim passed in the
Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid
colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the
clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of
landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding
all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the
foundation stones of heaven's walls as Saint John saw them in his dream
exquisite.

It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded
broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a
Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged,
had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession--a possession
henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for
her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.

One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun
in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry
Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to
her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two,
time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her
would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the
thought of any other love.

This did not make her the less charming, however--this pretty girl
without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure
of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush
Valley, she took full measur