n't a pleasant job for a woman, tending a
wound like yours."

"Is that so?" said Dorothy, mischievously. "That's as much as you know
about it. It's been one of the most delightful jobs I ever had."

"She's a wonderful girl," said Wade, with a tender look at her, after
they had laughed at her outburst.

"Oh, you just think that because I'm the only girl around here," she
blushingly declared, and the physician kept right on laughing.

"There _was_ another girl here once," said Wade. "Or at least she acted
somewhat differently from anything you've done lately."

He was well enough now to receive his friends on brief visits, and
Trowbridge was the first to drop in. Dorothy did not mind having Lem,
but she was not sure she enjoyed having the others, for she had found
the close association with Gordon so very sweet; but she told herself
that she must not be foolish, and she welcomed all who came. Naturally
so pretty a girl doing the honors of the house so well, and so closely
linked with the fortunes of the host, gave rise to the usual deductions.
Many were the quiet jokes which the cattlemen passed amongst themselves
over the approaching wedding, and the festival they would make of the
occasion.

"Well, good-by, Miss Purnell," said Trowbridge one day, smiling and yet
with a curiously pathetic droop to his mouth.

"_Miss_ Purnell?" Dorothy exclaimed, in the act of shaking hands.

"That's what I said." He nodded wisely. "Good-by, Miss Purnell."
Refusing to be envious of his friend's good fortune, he laughed cheerily
and was gone before she saw through his little joke.

The next afternoon she was reading to Gordon when the far-away look in
his eyes told her that he was not listening. She stopped, wondering what
he could be dreaming about, and missing the sound of her voice, he
looked toward her.

"You weren't even listening," she chided, smilingly.

"I was thinking that I've never had a chance to get into those
church-going clothes," he said, with a return of the old whimsical mood.
"But I look pretty clean, don't I?"

"Yes," she answered, suddenly shy.

"Hair brushed? Tie right? Boots clean?"

To each question she had nodded assent. Her heart was beating very fast
and the rosy color was mounting to the roots of her hair, but she
refused to lower her eyes in panic. She looked him straight in the face
with a sweet, tender, cool gaze.

"Yes," she said again.

"Well, then, give me your hand." He hitched his roc