discovering his curiously sheared face with its picturesque
features strong, its weakness under the shadows.

"What did you think of Mary?" he inquired, free to discuss the ladies,
now Rabbit was gone.

"Mary's a little bit of all right, Dad."

"Yes, and not such a little bit, either. Mary's some chunk of a girl;
she'll grow up to a woman that suits my eye. You could do worse than
set your cap for that little lady, it seems to me, John."

"Any man could. She's got a lively eye, and wise head, too, if I'm not
away off."

"She looks soft when you first glance her, but she's as deep as a
well. Mary ain't the build of a girl that fools a man and throws him
down. Now, you take Joan, a kind of a high-headed touch-me-not, with
that gingerbread hair and them eyes that don't ever seem to be in
fifty-five mile of you when you're talkin' to her. I tell you, the man
that marries her's got trouble up his sleeve. He'll wake up some
morning and find her gone off with some other man."

"What makes you think that, Dad?"

"Not satisfied with what she's got, always lookin' off over the hill
like a breachy cow calculatin' on how much better the grazin'd be if
she could hop the fence and go tearin' off over there. Joan ain't the
kind that settles down to nuss babies and make a man a home. Mary is.
That's the difference between them two girls."

"Maybe you're right about it, Dad--I expect you are. You ought to know
women if any man does."

"Well, neither one of 'em ain't a woman in the full meanin' of the
word," Dad reflected, "but they've got the marks on 'em of what
they'll turn out to be. The man that marries Mary he'll play safe; the
feller that gits Joan takes on a gamble. If she ever does marry Reid
he'll not keep her seven months. Shucks! I married a red-headed woman
one time back in Oklahomey, and that blame woman run off with a
horse-doctor inside of three months. I never did hear tell of that
fool woman any more."

"I don't agree with you on the way you've got Joan sized up, no
difference if your wife did run off with a horse-doctor. Her hair
ain't red, anyway."

"Might as well be. You ain't so much of a hand at readin' people,
anyhow, John; before you marry you ought to see a fortune-teller and
have your hand read. You got away off on Reid, holdin' up for him
agin' my judgment when he first come here on the range--don't you
remember?"

"I didn't want to pass judgment on him in advance; that was all,
Dad."

"Cour