y for anything in the way of fun, for the doctor had just
pronounced her patient out of danger if he took proper care of himself.

"About as fur as I got with y'u, ma'am," he audaciously retorted.

"We might disagree as to how far that is," she flung back gayly with
heightened color.

"No, ma'am, I don't think we would."

"But, gracious! You're not a Mormon. You don't want us both, do you?"
she demanded, her eyes sparkling with the exhilaration of the tilt.

"Could I get either one of y'u, do y'u reckon? That's what's worrying
me."

"I see, and so you intend to keep us both on the string."

His joyous laughter echoed hers. "I expaict y'u would call that
presumption or some other dictionary word, wouldn't y'u?"

"In anybody else perhaps, but surely not in Mr. McWilliams."

"I'm awful glad to be trotting in a class by myself."

"And you'll let us know when you have made your mind up which of us it
is to be?"

"Well, mine ain't the only mind that has to be made up," he drawled.

She took this up gleefully. "I can't answer for Nora, but I'll jump at
the chance--if you decide to give it to me."

He laughed delightedly into the hat he was momentarily expecting to put
on. "I'll mill it over a spell and let y'u know, ma'am."

"Yes, think it over from all points of view. Of course she is prettier,
but then I'm not afflicted with rheumatism and probably wouldn't flirt
as much afterward. I have a good temper, too, as a rule, but then so has
Nora."

"Oh, she's prettier, is she?" With boyish audacity he grinned at her.

"What do you think?"

He shook his head. "I'll have to go to the foot of the class on that,
ma'am. Give me an easier one."

"I'll have to choose another subject then. What did you do about that
bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?"

They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went back to
her patient and he to his work.

"Ain't she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?" the foreman asked
himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his hat against
his leg as he strode toward the corral. "Think of her coming at me like
she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y'u bet she knows me down to
the ground and how sudden I got over any fool notions I might a-started
to get in my cocoanut. But the way she came back at me, quick as
lightning and then some, pretendin' all that foolishness and knowin' all
the time I'd savez the game."

Both McWilliams and his