. For several weeks his face had been showing some sort of strain,
but at this moment he looked comfortable. She had been telling him that
she was glad that he had put up the new watering trough in Court House
Square, and the way she had talked about it had made him feel sure that
he had had some notion, when he did it, of benefiting the community,
instead of insuring that the farmers would stop in front of the Grange
store, in which he was interested.

She sat on a bench near him, quite idle; her gown, a tawny drapery,
whose half-hidden suggestions of blue were like shy spring flowers, was
sheathed closely about her; her eyes were following the pale wide river
below the garden; her hair, so light that it made her eyes seem lighter,
was piled above the warm, creamy tan of her forehead; there was a little
drowsy droop on her face; the dusky-gold radiance was all about her.

"Daddy," she said, by and by, "do you know that I swam the Di once?" He
laughed sleepily. He remembered. "I wonder if I could do it now--I was
pretty awful as a youngster, wasn't I, Daddy?"

"You certainly had a reputation," he admitted.

"Do you know that I still have a good deal of a reputation"--she turned
upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity--"as
though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as
when I was twelve!"

"Hump-mmh, hump-mmh!" He looked at her from under his slanted lids and
shook his head, while his big face quivered with amusement. "You haven't
given up all your riotous tricks even yet--don't tell me." He spoke
with the indulgence that had allowed free rein to her caprices all her
life.

"Never you mind, I do precious little that is riotous any more; I am
getting used to harness," she made answer, and looked as though she did
not mean to be interfered with in the precious little that was riotous
that she still clung to, and then looked as though she were threatening
herself with sweeping reform. "Go back to sleep, Daddy. You will be in
my way presently, anyhow."

"Anybody coming?"

"Your Mr. Steering."

"'My!'" Madeira's face clouded over, and he thrust out his jaw
grimacingly. "If he _were_ mine, you know what I should do with him?" he
asked, in a sharp voice.

"No, I don't know. What would you do with him?"

"I should send him packing back East. This country don't need,--aw, the
people of this country are good enough for the country and the country
is good enough for them.