I can take you out any time you can go."

"At once, then. I'll get my hat and be with you in a moment."

When he came downstairs Everett found a cart at the door, and Charley
Gaylord drew a long sigh of relief as he gathered up the reins and
settled back into his own element.

"I think I'd better tell you something about my sister before you see
her, and I don't know just where to begin. She travelled in Europe with
your brother and his wife, and sang at a lot of his concerts; but I don't
know just how much you know about her."

"Very little, except that my brother always thought her the most gifted
of his pupils. When I knew her she was very young and very beautiful,
and quite turned my head for a while."

Everett saw that Gaylord's mind was entirely taken up by his grief.
"That's the whole thing," he went on, flecking his horses with the whip.

"She was a great woman, as you say, and she didn't come of a great
family. She had to fight her own way from the first. She got to Chicago,
and then to New York, and then to Europe, and got a taste for it all; and
now she's dying here like a rat in a hole, out of her own world, and she
can't fall back into ours. We've grown apart, some way--miles and miles
apart--and I'm afraid she's fearfully unhappy."

"It's a tragic story you're telling me, Gaylord," said Everett. They were
well out into the country now, spinning along over the dusty plains of
red grass, with the ragged blue outline of the mountains before them.

"Tragic!" cried Gaylord, starting up in his seat, "my God, nobody will
ever know how tragic! It's a tragedy I live with and eat with and sleep
with, until I've lost my grip on everything. You see she had made a good
bit of money, but she spent it all going to health resorts. It's her
lungs. I've got money enough to send her anywhere, but the doctors all
say it's no use. She hasn't the ghost of a chance. It's just getting
through the days now. I had no notion she was half so bad before she came
to me. She just wrote that she was run down. Now that she's here, I think
she'd be happier anywhere under the sun, but she won't leave. She says
it's easier to let go of life here. There was a time when I
was a brakeman with a run out of Bird City, Iowa, and she was a little
thing I could carry on my shoulder, when I could get her everything on
earth she wanted, and she hadn't a wish my $80 a month didn't cover; and
now, when I've got a little property together, I can'