left the big world?"

Wilfred shook his head. "I'm poor enough," he said, "but it wasn't
that. It was a girl."

Brick Willock explained, "He's got a sweetheart; he's been carrying her
letters for about two years. He's done spoke for, Lahoma, staked out,
as a fellow might say, and squatted on."

Lahoma looked at him in breathless interest. "A girl out in the big
world? Completely civilized, I reckon! Was she as old as I am?"

"Why, honey!" Brick exclaimed uneasily, "YOU ain't got no age at all,
to speak of! What are you but a mere child? This young man is talking
about them as has got up to be old enough to think of
sweethearting--something respectable in YEARS."

"And how old does a sweetheart have to be?" demanded Lahoma with some
displeasure. "I feel old enough for anything, and Wilfred doesn't look
any older than the knight standing guard in THE TALISMAN. Besides,
look at David Copperfield and Little Em'ly."

"That was child's work," retorted Brick.

"I was afraid of this," growled Bill Atkins restlessly.

Wilfred laughed out. "Don't worry. My eastern girl is at least
nineteen years old, and so thoroughly civilized that she thinks this
part of the world is still overrun with Indians and buffaloes. She
wouldn't live out here for a fortune, and she wouldn't marry a man back
East without one--that's why I'm here. I didn't have the fortune."

"Does she LOVE you, Wilfred?" Her voice was so soft, her eyes were so
big, that Bill uttered a smothered groan, and even Brick sat up.

"She did the last time I saw her--can't say how she feels now; that's
been about two years ago." He spoke lightly; but gazing into the
wonderful depths of Lahoma's eyes, he felt a queer sensation like a
lost heart-beat.

"Did she send you here as a kind of test?"

"Oh, no, she told me good-by and we parted forever. Both of us were
poor,--you can't live in the city if you're poor; you can BE poor
there, but not LIVE. By this time she's found some one with property,
I dare say--she's tremendously handsome and accomplished, and has a
very distinguished-looking mother and they have friends in
society--she'll make it all right, no doubt." His voice was
matter-of-fact even to indifference; but for all that, he seemed to be
deeply inhaling Lahoma's freshness of morning-rose sparkling with dew.

"Does it pierce your heart to think of her marrying somebody else?" Her
voice was sweet with the dream-passion of a young girl.