and gave her a flower. "Put
this in his coat, my dear," she said. "And I think I understand why you
wanted to marry him."

After this the maid came and showed them to their rooms. Left alone in
her garden, the great-aunt sank on a bench and sat there for some time;
for emotion had made her very weak.

Upstairs, Molly, sitting on the Virginian's knee, put the flower in his
coat, and then laid her head upon his shoulder.

"I didn't know old ladies could be that way," he said. "D' yu' reckon
there are many?"

"Oh, I don't know," said the girl. "I'm so happy!"

Now at tea, and during the evening, the great-aunt carried out her plans
still further. At first she did the chief part of the talking herself.
Nor did she ask questions about Wyoming too soon. She reached that in
her own way, and found out the one thing that she desired to know. It
was through General Stark that she led up to it.

"There he is," she said, showing the family portrait. "And a rough time
he must have had of it now and then. New Hampshire was full of fine
young men in those days. But nowadays most of them have gone away to
seek their fortunes in the West. Do they find them, I wonder?"

"Yes, ma'am. All the good ones do."

"But you cannot all be--what is the name?--Cattle Kings."

"That's having its day, ma'am, right now. And we are getting ready for
the change--some of us are."

"And what may be the change, and when is it to come?"

"When the natural pasture is eaten off," he explained. "I have seen that
coming a long while. And if the thieves are going to make us drive
our stock away, we'll drive it. If they don't, we'll have big pastures
fenced, and hay and shelter ready for winter. What we'll spend in
improvements, we'll more than save in wages. I am well fixed for the
new conditions. And then, when I took up my land, I chose a place where
there is coal. It will not be long before the new railroad needs that."

Thus the old lady learned more of her niece's husband in one evening
than the Bennington family had ascertained during his whole sojourn with
them. For by touching upon Wyoming and its future, she roused him to
talk. He found her mind alive to Western questions: irrigation, the
Indians, the forests; and so he expanded, revealing to her his wide
observation and his shrewd intelligence. He forgot entirely to be shy.
She sent Molly to bed, and kept him talking for an hour. Then she showed
him old things that she was proud of, "beca