must learn to
assume responsibility."

McCloud looked apprehensive. "I am afraid she will be assuming the
whole division if you encourage her too much, Mr. Bucks."

"Marrying a railroad man," continued Bucks, pursuing his own thought,
"is as bad as marrying into the army; if you have your husband half
the time you are lucky. Then, too, in the railroad business your
husband may have to be set back when the traffic falls off. It's a
little light at this moment, too. How should you take it if we had to
put him on a freight train for a while, Mrs. McCloud?"

"Oh, Mr. Bucks!"

"Or suppose he should be promoted and should have to go to
headquarters--some of us are getting old, you know."

"Really," Dicksie looked most demure as she filled the president's
cup, "really, I often say to Mr. McCloud that I can not believe Mr.
Bucks is president of this great road. He always looks to me to be the
youngest man on the whole executive staff. Two lumps of sugar, Mr.
Bucks?"

The bachelor president rolled his eyes as he reached for his cup.
"Thank you, Mrs. McCloud, only one after that." He looked toward
Marion. "All I can say is that if Mrs. McCloud's husband had married
her two years earlier he might have been general manager by this time.
Nothing could hold a man back, even a man of his modesty, whose wife
can say as nice things as that. By the way, Mrs. Sinclair, does this
man keep you supplied with transportation?"

"Oh, I have my annual, Mr. Bucks!" Marion opened her bag to find it.

Bucks held out his hand. "Let me see it a moment." He adjusted his
eye-glasses, looked at the pass, and called for a pen; Bucks had
never lost his gracious way of doing very little things. He laid the
card on the table and wrote across the back of it over his name: "Good
on all passenger trains." When he handed the card back to Marion he
turned to Dicksie. "I understand you are laying out two or three towns
on the ranch, Mrs. McCloud?"

"Two or three! Oh, no, only one as yet, Mr. Bucks! They are laying
out, oh, such a pretty town! Cousin Lance is superintending the street
work--and whom do you think I am going to name it after? You! I think
'Bucks' makes a dandy name for a town, don't you? And I am going to
have one town named Dunning; there will be two stations on the ranch,
you know, and I think, really, there _ought_ to be three."

"As many as that?"

"I don't believe you can operate a line that long, Mr. Bucks, with
stations fourtee