er feet tucked up under her as if
she feared an instant inundation. She, also, was giving utterance to her
feminine irritation at the discomfort--of her aunt presumably, since she
herself was high and dry.

"And it won't do a BIT of good. They'll just knock that dam business all
to pieces to-night--" She was scolding Grant.

"Swearing, chicken? Things must be in a great state!"

Grant grinned at Miss Georgie, forgetting for the moment his rebuff that
morning. "She did swear, didn't she?" he confirmed wickedly. "And she's
been working overtime, trying to reform me. Wanted to pin me down to 'my
goodness!' and 'oh, dear!'--with all this excitement taking place on the
ranch!"

"I wasn't swearing at all. Grant has been shoveling sand all afternoon,
building a dam over by the fence, and the water has been rising and
rising till--" She waved her hand gloomily at her bedraggled Aunt Phoebe
working like a motherly sort of gnome in its shadowy grotto. "Oh, if I
were Aunt Phoebe, I should just shake you, Grant Imsen!"

"Try it," he invited, his eyes worshiping her in her pretty petulance.
"I wish you would."

As Miss Georgie went past them down the steps, her face had the set
look of one who is consciously and deliberately cheerful under trying
conditions.

"Don't quarrel, children," she advised lightly. "Howdy, Mrs. Hart? What
are they trying to do--drown you?"

"Oh, these boys of mine! They'll be the death of me, what with the
things they won't do, and the things they WILL do. They're trying now
to create a water famine for the jumpers, and they're making their own
mother swim for the good of the cause." Phoebe held out a plump hand,
moist and cold from lifting cool crocks of milk, and laughed at her own
predicament.

"The water won't rise any more, Mother Hart," Grant called down to her
from the top step, where he was sitting unblushingly beside Evadna. "I
told you six inches would be the limit, and then it would run off in the
new ditch. You know I explained just why--"

"Oh, yes, I know you explained just WHY," Phoebe cut in disconsolately
and yet humorously, "but explanations don't seem to help my poor
milk-house any. And what about the garden, and the fruit, if you turn
the water all down into the pasture? And what about the poor horses
getting their feet wet and catching their death of cold? And what's to
hinder that man Stanley and his gang from packing water in buckets from
the lake you're going to have in t