silent.

"You're thinking of the changes," says her escort.

"Yass; _'tis_ so. Dey got twenty time' many field' like had befo'.
Peop' don't raise cattl' no more; raise crop'. Dey say even dat land
changin'."

"How changing?"

"I dunno. I dunno if _'tis_ so. Dey say prairie risin' mo' higher
every year. I dunno if _'tis_ so. I t'ink dat land don't change much;
but de peop', yass."

"Still, the changes are mostly good changes," responds the male rider.
"'Tisn't the prairie, but the people that are rising. They've got the
schoolhouse, and the English language, and a free paid labor system,
and the railroads, and painted wagons, and Cincinnati furniture, and
sewing-machines, and melodeons, and Horsford's Acid Phosphate; and
they've caught the spirit of progress!"

"Yass, _'tis_ so. Dawn't see nobody seem satisfied--since de
army--since de railroad."

"Well, that's right enough; they oughtn't to be satisfied. You're not
satisfied, are you? And yet you've never done so well before as you
have this season. I wish I could say the same for the 'Album of
Universal Information;' but I can't. I tell you that, Madame
Beausoleil; I wouldn't tell anybody else."

Zosephine responds with a dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in
herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness
and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do
with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always
a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful
propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern
register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or
specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions
in her that Bonaventure lighted; and although Mr. Tarbox's modest
loveliness is not visible, yet a certain fundamental rectitude,
discernible behind all his nebulous gaudiness, confirms her liking.
Then, too, he has earned her gratitude. She has inherited not only her
father's small fortune, but his thrift as well. She can see the
sagacity of Mr. Tarbox's advice in pecuniary matters, and once and
once again, when he has told her quietly of some little operation into
which he and the ex-governor--who "thinks the world of me," he
says--were going to dip, and she has accepted his invitation to
venture in also, to the extent of a single thousand dollars, the money
has come back handsomely increased. Even now, the sale of all her
pra