said. "You are not modest, I hope?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Well, then! Miss Hunniman--you remember Miss Hunniman? She used to make
mama's dresses, and now she makes mine. She told me only a year ago that
whenever she read about Sir Galahad or the Chevalier Bayard or Richard
the Lion-hearted, she always thought of you; which was very
inconvenient, because it made her mix them up, and she never could
remember which of them went to the Crusades and which of them did not!"

Anything in the nature of a reminiscence was sure to jar upon Stanwood.
He preferred to consider the charming young person beside him as an
agreeable episode; he half resented any reminder of the permanence of
their relation. Therefore, in response to this little confidence, which
caused the quaint figure of Miss Hunniman to present itself with a
hundred small, thronging associations of the past, he only remarked
drily:

"I suppose you know that if you stay out here any length of time you
will spoil your complexion."

Elizabeth was impressionable enough to feel the full significance of
such hints and side-thrusts as were cautiously administered to her. She
was quite aware that she and her father were totally at odds on the main
point at issue, that he had as yet no intention of sharing his solitude
with her for any length of time. As the days went by she perceived
something else. She was not long in discovering that he was extremely
poor, and she became aware in some indefinable wise that he held
existence very cheap. Had her penetration been guided by a form of
experience which she happily lacked, she might have suspected still
another factor in the situation which had an unacknowledged influence
upon Stanwood's attitude.

Meanwhile their relation continued to be a friendly one. They were, in
fact, peculiarly congenial, and they could not well live together
without discovering it.

They rode together, they cooked together, they set up a target, and had
famous shooting-matches. Elizabeth learned to milk the cows and make
butter, to saddle her bronco and mount him from the ground. They taught
the pups tricks, they tamed a family of prairie-dogs, they had a plan
for painting the windmill. By the end of a week Stanwood was in such
good humor, that he made a marked concession.

One of the glowing, glimmering sunsets they both delighted in was going
on, beautifying the prairie as warmly as the sky. Stanwood came from the
shed where he had been feeding