d at him half in terror, and in his discomfort murmured
something about going to look up his daughter.

"Now, that's mighty kind of you," said Dan Anderson. "But I know the
way over there alone, and after I have taken you back to Uncle Jim's,
I am going over there--alone. Wait till I get my coat. I don't wear
it very often, but we'll just show you that we can dress up for the
evening here, the same as they do in the States."

As Dan Anderson, his head bent down and his hands in his pockets,
crossed the _arroyo_ alone, he met Curly coming the other way.
Curly's brow was wrinkled, though he expressed a certain consciousness
of the importance of his position in society at the time.

"Say, man," said he, jerking his thumb toward the house, "that new
girl is the absolute limit. She dropped in just like we'd been
expectin' her. I was some scared; but _she's_ just _folks_!"

Dan Anderson hardly heard him. He passed on into the house, where he
had long ago made himself easily at home with the women of the place.
It was a half hour later that he spoke directly to the girl. "I was
just thinking," said he, "that after all the dust and heat and
everything you might like to walk, for just a minute or so, over to
our city park. Foliage, you know; avenues, flowers; sweetness and
light."

She looked at the man quietly, as if she failed to understand the
half-cynical bitterness, the half-wistfulness in his voice, yet she
rose and joined him. All human beings in Heart's Desire that evening
fell in with the plans of Dan Anderson without cavil and without
possible resistance.

A short distance up the _arroyo_, toward the old abandoned stamp
mill, there was a two-inch pipe of water which came down from the
Patos spring, far up on the mountain side. At the end of this pipe,
where the water was now going to waste, the Littlest Girl from Kansas
had taken in charge the precious flow, and proposed a tiny garden of
her own. Here there were divers shrubs, among these a single rose
bush, now blossomless. Dan Anderson broke off a leafy twig or so, and
handed them to Constance, who pinned them on her breast.

"This is our park," said he, very gravely; "I hope you have enjoyed
your stroll along the boulevard. I hope, also, that the entertainment
of the cow gentleman was not displeasing."

"Not a word!" she answered, her cheek flushing; "you shall not rail at
them. These people are genuine."

"I'm not apologizing," he said quic