o pour out my coffee, or to use the same spoon for
coffee and other vittles, or to sidle up my plate for the last drop of
soup there was in it--oh, several tricks like that; though I knew the
game was a heap complicated and I hadn't learned it all yet.

She looks at me when I went out the door and I shook my head to show I
hadn't said nothing. She set down, all in her silk and her shining rings
and things, right on our old hide lounge; and she was looking at our
painting of the Yellow Bull Valley and the old ranch house. I left her
there, all in her diamonds, her hair tied up high--about the richest
girl in Chicago and, like enough, the miserablest right then. But she
didn't have nothing on me at that.

When we come back, all fixed up the best we could, she was still setting
there. She was pretty--Lord, how pretty!--but sad.

She gets up now and begins to laugh and talk right fast to the old man,
and by and by, before anything broke, Old Man Kimberly and Old Lady
Kimberly drifted in.

"The young folks'll be over before long," says he; "we didn't wait for
'em, because I just wanted a taste of the old bourbon that I find here
and can't find anywheres else. Where did you get it, Colonel?" says he.

Most everybody called him Colonel now, from me doing it first, and then
Katherine.

"We had a few barrels out on the old ranch," says the boss. "A little of
it escaped in the massacree. I'm glad you like it."

It come now about time for dinner, which was always pulled off on the
tick of the clock. On the ranch in camp the cook always calls "Grub
pile!" for the hands. In the home ranch he's more particular, and he
says, "Come and git it!" when dinner's ready. But here, in our new
house, our butler, William, always'd gumshoe in and say it so low you
couldn't hardly hear him: "Dinner is served, Miss Wright." But, as them
kids was a little late in coming, Old Man Kimberly finds time to take
another nip.

"Why, Wilfred!" says his wife to him, "I'm surprised!"

"It's funny how you're surprised," says he, chuckling in his shirt
front; "but I'm glad to have you keep up my reputation by saying you're
surprised."

Somehow it was with them like it is with plenty of folks in the
States--the women always seem finer, more delercate than the men; yet
they seem to like men that ain't fussy. Old Man Kimberly was a good
sort; but to look at her you'd wonder why she married him. She always
set up straight, away from a chair or a sofa b