urs were not all easeful,
happy ones. Slowly, with the passing of the days, she began to learn the
hard lesson of overcoming, a lesson doubly hard for one whose life
hitherto had been given no preparation for duty. Yet, as her days
gathered surer purpose her dark-blue eyes were less often dreamy, her
fair cheeks took on a richer bloom, while her crown of glorious hair
lost no glint of its gold.

Her gift of winning friends, the old imperious power to make herself the
center of the universe, was in no wise disturbed by being a citizen and
a school-teacher instead of an Eastern lady of leisure sojourning
temporarily in the Sage Brush country. The young men of the valley tried
eagerly to win a greater place than that of mere friendship with her,
but she gave no serious consideration to any of them, least of all--so
she persuaded herself--to the young ranchman whom she had met so early
after her arrival in Kansas. Further, she had persuaded herself that the
pretty rural romance she had woven about him and his Norwegian neighbor,
Thelma Ekblad, must be a reality. Thelma had finished her university
course and was making a success of farming and of caring for her
crippled brother Paul and that roly-poly Belkap baby, now a
white-haired, blue-eyed, red-lipped chunk of innocence, responsibility,
and delight. Gossip, beginning at Stellar Bahrr's door, said that
interest in her neighbor, the big ranchman down the river, was
responsible for Thelma's staying on the Ekblad farm, now that she had
her university degree, because she could make a career for herself as a
botany specialist in any college in the West. Jerry knew that love for a
crippled brother and the care of a worse than orphaned child of the
woman that brother had loved were real factors in the life of this
country girl, but her air castles must be built for somebody, and they
seemed to cluster around the young Norwegian and the ranchman. Of
course, then, the ranchman, Joe Thomson, could interest Jerry only in a
general genial comradeship kind of way. Beginning in a common bond, the
presence of a common enemy--the blowout--chance meetings grew into
regular and helpful association. That was all that it meant to Jerry
Swaim.

Three stanch friends watched her closely. Ponk, of the Commercial Hotel
and Garage, believed blindly and wholly in her ability, laying all blame
for her defective work in the school upon other shoulders, standing
manfully by her in every crisis. Laur