ll always
go for me, just as they did for Wunsch. It wasn't because he drank they
went for him; not really. It was something else."

"You want to salt your money down, Thee, and go to Chicago and take some
lessons. Then you come back, and wear a long feather and high heels and
put on a few airs, and that'll fix 'em. That's what they like."

"I'll never have money enough to go to Chicago. Mother meant to lend me
some, I think, but now they've got hard times back in Nebraska, and her
farm don't bring her in anything. Takes all the tenant can raise to pay
the taxes. Don't let's talk about that. You promised to tell me about
the play you went to see in Denver."

Any one would have liked to hear Ray's simple and clear account of the
performance he had seen at the Tabor Grand Opera House--Maggie Mitchell
in LITTLE BAREFOOT--and any one would have liked to watch his kind face.
Ray looked his best out of doors, when his thick red hands were covered
by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned face somehow seemed right
in the light and wind. He looked better, too, with his hat on; his hair
was thin and dry, with no particular color or character, "regular
Willy-boy hair," as he himself described it. His eyes were pale beside
the reddish bronze of his skin. They had the faded look often seen in
the eyes of men who have lived much in the sun and wind and who have
been accustomed to train their vision upon distant objects.

Ray realized that Thea's life was dull and exacting, and that she missed
Wunsch. He knew she worked hard, that she put up with a great many
little annoyances, and that her duties as a teacher separated her more
than ever from the boys and girls of her own age. He did everything he
could to provide recreation for her. He brought her candy and magazines
and pineapples--of which she was very fond--from Denver, and kept his
eyes and ears open for anything that might interest her. He was, of
course, living for Thea. He had thought it all out carefully and had
made up his mind just when he would speak to her. When she was
seventeen, then he would tell her his plan and ask her to marry him. He
would be willing to wait two, or even three years, until she was twenty,
if she thought best. By that time he would surely have got in on
something: copper, oil, gold, silver, sheep,--something.

Meanwhile, it was pleasure enough to feel that she depended on him more
and more, that she leaned upon his steady kindness. He never