I can't blame you very much," the Major continued, after they were well
settled. "I've been trying lately to get into harmonious relations with
my employees, and I think I'm succeeding. I have a father and
grandfather in shirt sleeves to start from and to refer back to, but
Saulisbury hasn't. He means well, but he can't always hold himself in.
He means to be democratic, but his blood betrays him."

Arthur soon lost the keen edge of his grievance under the kindly chat of
the Major.

The farm lay on either side of a small stream which ran among the buttes
and green mesas of the foothills. Out to the left, the kingly peak
looked benignantly across the lesser heights that thrust their ambitious
heads in the light. Cattle were feeding among the smooth, straw-colored
or sage-green hills. A cluster of farm buildings stood against an
abrupt, cedar-splotched bluff, out of which a stream flowed and shortly
fell into a large basin.

The irrigation ditch pleased and interested Arthur, for it was the
finest piece of work he had yet seen. It ran around the edge of the
valley, discharging at its gates streams of water like veins, which
meshed the land, whereon men were working among young plants.

"I'll put you in charge of a team, I think," the Major said, after
talking with the foreman, a big, red-haired man, who looked at Arthur
with his head thrown back and one eye shut.

"Well, now you're safe," said the Major, as he got into his buggy, "so
I'll leave you. Richards will see you have a bed."

Arthur knew and liked the foreman's family at once. They were familiar
types. At supper he told them of his plans, and how he came to be out
there; and they came to feel a certain proprietorship in him at once.

"Well, I'm glad you've come," said Mrs. Richards, after their
acquaintanceship had mellowed a day or two. "You're like our own folks
back in Illinois, and I can't make these foreigners seem neighbors
nohow. Not but what they're good enough, but, land sakes! they don't
jibe in someway."

Arthur winced a little at being classed in with her folks, and changed
the subject.

One Sunday, a couple of weeks later, just as he was putting on his old
clothes to go out to do his evening's chores, the Major and a merry
party of visitors came driving into the yard. Arthur came out to the
carriage, a little annoyed that these city people should not have come
when he had on his Sunday clothes. The Major greeted him pleasantly.

"Good even