eady for callers, what pretty dresses they would have, and
what gay, good times.

"Do you want callers? Is that what you want, Lilian?"

"Oh, you stupid fellow! I want anything except this awful experience. I
told mother I even wished the Indians would drop down on us."

"Why, Lilian, if you saw even one Indian coming down the road, you'd run
and hide under the bed."

"No, indeed I wouldn't. I'd make my very best courtesy and wish him a
Happy New Year. I would spread the table with the rose-bud china, make
coffee for him, and--"

"Y-e-s--but before you'd half done, he would whip out his tomahawk,
grasp you by the hair--this way--and, w-h-o-o-p! off would come your
scalp. Then he'd tuck your braids into his belt, and away he'd go to the
reservation to hang them up on the ridge-pole of his wigwam!"

"All the same, I wish he'd come."

Jack laughed.

"Say, Ben," he called, "Sis wants visitors so badly, she even wishes a
Comanche would call."

"I do," persisted Lilian. "I wish a whole tribe would come!"

Harry stormed into the sitting-room, in search of his heavy leather
gloves.

"Where are you going, Harry?" asked Lilian, eagerly.

"Out on business," he answered. "Are you ready, Jack?"

"Are you all going off?" cried Lilian, in alarm, lest she should lose
even the doubtful pleasure of her brothers' company.

"We're going on the ponies, to look up some stray cattle for Uncle
Abner."

"But mamma said you would take me for a drive?"

"Can't this morning--too busy!"

"We're all to go this evening, you know," comforted Jamie.

"This evening! What am I to do alone all day?"

A flood of tears again threatened.

"Oh, entertain your callers!" said Harry, with scant sympathy.

Lilian watched the four boys on their ponies go down the poplar-lined
lane to the highway, and then, too desperate for reading or study, or
even helping her mother, she flung herself on a sofa and hid her face.

The day was a dazzling one. The rolling prairie on every side looked
like a white ocean, with great, sweeping billows of snow as far as eye
could see.

The widely separated farm-houses, with their wind-breaks of Lombardy
poplars and interspersing clusters of evergreens, looked like ships on
this endless, shining, cold sea.

One needed a happy heart and busy hands not to be affected by the
vastness and isolation.

Neither of these did Lilian have, and it took her nearly the entire
forenoon to get through her bitter strugg