You can't get out of the place they make for
you in their estimation of you. Hector Hall never will believe I'm
too good to go to a dance with him. He'll be sore about it all his
life."

"A man naturally would have regrets, Miss Sullivan. Maybe that's as
far as it goes with Hector Hall, maybe he's only sore at heart for the
honor denied."

"That don't sound like real talk," said Joan.

Mackenzie grinned at the rebuke, and the candor and frankness in which
it was administered, thinking that Joan would have a frigid time of it
out in the world if she applied such outspoken rules to its flatteries
and mild humbugs.

"Let's be natural then," he suggested, considering as he spoke that
candor was Joan's best defense in her position on the range. Here she
sat out under the stars with him, miles from the nearest habitation,
miles from her father's house, her small protector asleep in the
wagon, and thought no more of it than a chaperoned daughter of the
city in an illuminated drawing-room. A girl had to put men in their
places and keep them there under such circumstances, and nobody knew
better how to do it than Joan.

"I'll try your patience and good humor when you start out to teach
me," she told him, "for I'll want to run before I learn to walk."

"We'll see how it goes in a few days; I've sent for the books."

"I'll make a good many wild breaks," she said, "and tumble around a
lot, I know, but there won't be anybody to laugh at me--but you." She
paused as if considering the figure she would make at the tasks she
awaited with such impatience, then added under her breath, almost in
a whisper, as if it was not meant for him to hear: "But you'll never
laugh at me for being hungry to learn."

Mackenzie attempted neither comment nor reply to this, feeling that it
was Joan's heart speaking to herself alone. He looked away over the
sleeping sheeplands, vast as the sea, and as mysterious under the
starlight, thinking that it would require more than hard lessons and
unusual tasks to discourage this girl. She stood at the fountain-edge,
leaning with dry lips to drink, her wistful eyes strong to probe the
mysteries which lay locked in books yet strange to her, but wiser in
her years than many a man who had skimmed a college course. There was
a vast difference between knowledge and learning, indeed; it never had
been so apparent to him as in the presence of that outspoken girl of
the sheep range that summer night.

What woul