nd some hours here and
look at everything. I'd begin at the pictures and work right around."

Mrs. Radcliffe's smile suggested that she was not displeased.

"But you have been in London?"

"I have," said Wyllard. "I had one or two letters to persons there, and
they did all they could to entertain me. Still, their places were
different; they hadn't the--charm--of yours. It's something which I
think could exist only in these still valleys and in cathedral closes.
It strikes me more because it is something I've never been accustomed
to."

Mrs. Radcliffe was interested, and fancied that she partly understood
his attitude.

"Your life is necessarily different from ours," she suggested.

Wyllard smiled. "It's so different that you couldn't realize it. It's
all strain and effort from early sunrise until after dusk at night.
Bodily strain of aching muscles, and mental stress in adverse seasons.
We scarcely think of comfort, and never dream of artistic luxury. The
money we make is sunk again in seed and extra teams and plows."

"After all, a good many people are driven rather hard by the love of
money here."

"No," Wyllard rejoined gravely, "that's not it exactly. At least, not
with the most of us. It's rather the pride of wresting another
quarter-section from the prairie, taking--our own--by labor, breaking
the wilderness. You"--and he added this as if to explain that he could
hardly expect her quite to grasp his views--"have never been out West?"

His hostess laughed. "I have stayed down in the plains through the hot
season in stifling cantonments, and have once or twice been in Indian
cholera camps. Besides, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and worn
with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that surged
about him half-mad with religious fury. There were Hindus and Moslems to
be kept from flying at each other's throats, and at a tactless word or
sign of wavering, either party would have pulled him down."

"You'll have to forgive me"--Wyllard's gesture was deprecatory, though
his eyes twinkled. "The notion that we're the only ones who really work,
or, at least, do anything worth while, is rather a favorite one out
West. No doubt it's a delusion. I should have known that all of us are
born like that."

Mrs. Radcliffe forgave him readily, if only for the "all of us," which
struck her as especially fortunate. A few minutes later there were
voices in the hall, and then the door opened, and the girl