ly symmetrical, so accurately proportioned. And there were
times, too, when, even to the eyes of a white man, her color rather
enhanced her beauty; and this was when her slow smile crept over her
face.

Rosebud had no classical regularity of feature, but she had what is
better. Her face was a series of expressions, changing with almost every
moment as her swift-passing moods urged her. One feature she possessed
that utterly eclipsed anything the stately beauty of the other could
claim. She had large, lustrous violet eyes that seemed like wells of
ever-changing color. They never looked at you with the same shade in their
depths twice. They were eyes that madden by reason of their inconsistency.
They dwarfed in beauty every other feature in the girl's face. She was
pretty in an irregular manner, but one never noticed anything in her face
when her eyes were visible. These, and her masses of golden hair, which
flowed loosely about her head in thick, rope-like curls, were her great
claims to beauty.

Now, as she stood smiling up into the dark face above her, she looked what
she was; a girl in the flush of early womanhood, a prairie girl, wild as
the flowers which grow hidden in the lank grass of the plains, as wayward
as the breezes which sweep them from every point of the compass.

"Mayn't I come in?" asked Rosebud, as the woman made no move to let her
pass.

Wanaha turned with some haste. "Surely," she said. "I was thinking. What
you call 'dreaming.'"

She eagerly put a stool for the girl to sit upon. But Rosebud preferred
the table.

"Well, Wana," said the girl, playfully, "you said you wanted me
particularly to-day, so, at great inconvenience to myself, and mother, I
have come. If it isn't important you'll get into grave trouble. I was
going to help Seth hoe the potatoes, but----"

"Poor Seth." Wanaha had caught something of the other's infectious mood.

"I don't think he needs any pity, either," said Rosebud, impulsively.
"Seth's sometimes too much of a good thing. He said I ought to learn to
hoe. And I don't think hoeing's very nice for one thing; besides, he
always gets angry if I cut out any of the plants. He can just do it
himself."

"Seth's a good man. He killed my father; but he is good, I think."

"Yes." For the moment Rosebud had become grave. "I wonder what would
have----" She broke off and looked searchingly into her friend's face.
"Wana," she went on abruptly, "why did you send for me to-day? I ca