sands of
acres of silent woods and hills, but I don't like it, nevertheless, and
shall undress in the dark. ...I shall certainly speak seriously to
Austin as soon as possible."

But the right moment for approaching Austin on the subject of his
return to Boston did not immediately present itself, and for several
days Manzanita, delighted at having a woman guest, took Mrs. Phelps
with her all over the countryside.

"I like lady friends," said Manzanita once, a little shyly. "You see
it's 'most always men who visit the rancho, and they're no fun!"

She used to come, uninvited but serene, into her prospective
mother-in-law's room at night, and artlessly confide in her, while she
braided the masses of her glorious hair. She showed Mrs. Phelps the
"swell" pillow she was embroidering to represent an Indian's head, and
which she intended to finish with real beads and real feathers. She was
as eagerly curious as a child about the older woman's dainty toilet
accessories, experimenting with manicure sets and creams and powders
with artless pleasure. "I'm going to have that and do it that way!" she
would announce, when impressed by some particular little nice touch
about Cornelia's letters, or some allusion that gave her a new idea.

"If you ever come to Boston, you will be expected to know all these
things," Mrs. Phelps said to her once, a little curiously.

"Oh, but I'll never go there!" she responded confidently.

"You will have to," said the other, sharply. "Austin can hardly spend
his whole life here! His friends are there, his family. All his
traditions are there. Those may not mean much to him now, but in time
to come they will mean more."

"We'll make more money than we can spend, right here," Manzanita said,
in a troubled voice.

"Money is not everything, my dear."

"No--" Manzanita's brown fingers went slowly down to the last fine
strands of the braid she was finishing. Then she said, brightening:

"But I AM everything to Aus! I don't care what I don't know, or can't
do, HE thinks I'm fine!"

And she went off to bed in high spirits. She was too entirely normal a
young woman to let anything worry her very long,--too busy to brood.
The visitor soon learned why the ranch-house parlor presented so dismal
an aspect of unuse. It was because Manzanita was never inside it. The
girl's days were packed to the last instant with duties and pleasures.
She needed no parlor. Even her bedroom was as bare and impersonal as
h