noticing Frieda's flushed
cheeks. As he gazed slowly around the family group, he noticed Miss
Jacqueline Ralston's haughty expression and Miss Ruth Drew's severe one;
saw Olive's troubled face and Jean's mischievous one. "I guess I had
better be going," Jim suggested, backing toward the door.

"Oh, no, Jim," Jack insisted carelessly. "There is nothing the matter,
only Cousin Ruth does not wish me to go to the round-up with you in the
morning. Will you please tell her that cowboys aren't all villains!"

Jim frowned. "If your Cousin don't want you to go, Jack, seems like you
had better stay at home," he declared quietly.

A little flush of triumph spread over Ruth's face. This was her first
trouble with any one of the ranch girls and their friend had sided with
her. She gave him a grateful glance, then closed her lips more firmly
than ever. With any one of the four girls save Jack, she would have
tried persuasion instead of command. But it seemed to her perfectly
useless to attempt to influence Jack.

Jack shrugged her shoulders. "I don't agree with you, Jim," she declared
obstinately.

Jim brought his lips together with a snap and stared straight at the
elder Miss Ralston. "Look here, Jack," he said, "wasn't it you who
asked your cousin to come out here to live with you, so as to have some
one to tell you what was right? Now it seems to me that you only want
her to tell you what you happen to want to do. I wasn't at all certain
that you ought to ride over to the round-up with me, but I've been
treating you like a boy so long, I can't somehow remember you're a girl.
Stay at home and keep out of mischief." Jim laughed.

Ruth smiled, thinking the battle was won, but Jack got up calmly and
marched out of the room and they heard her bedroom door close.

"I am afraid Jack is kind of hard-headed, but you mustn't mind," Jim
murmured apologetically. "You see she has always had things pretty much
her own way."

"Oh, let's don't talk about Jack," Jean expostulated. "Jim, I have been
telling Cousin Ruth that it is perfectly absurd for her not to learn how
to ride horseback and that she might as well be buried alive as not to
know how to ride out here on the ranch. The very idea, we can't go to
return Mrs. Simpson's and the lovely Laura's call without hitching up
our old mess-wagon. For goodness sake, won't you teach Cousin Ruth to
ride? She won't be so scared with you."

"Sure Mike," Jim exclaimed heartily and then turned