. Out in the
broad porch in the twilight she nestled down like a tired child among
the cushions, and gazed dreamily out at the evening landscape. York had
been called away by a neighbor and Laura and her guest were alone.

"How beautiful it is here!" Jerry murmured, as the afterglow of a
prairie sunset flooded the sky with a splendor of rose and opal and
amethyst. "I saw a sunset like that not long ago in an art exhibit in
Philadelphia. I thought then there couldn't be such a real sunset. It
was in a landscape all yellow-gray and desert-like. I thought that was
impossible, too. I've seen both--land and sky--to-day, and both are
greater than the artist painted them."

"The artist never equals the thing he is trying to copy, neither can he
create anything utterly unreal. I missed the exhibits very much when I
first came West, but this is some compensation," Laura said,
meditatively.

"Do you ever get lonely here? I suppose not, for you didn't come to find
a great disappointment when you came to New Eden," Jerry declared,
watching the tranquil face of her hostess.

"No, Jerry, I brought my disappointment with me," Laura said, with a
smile that made her look very much like her brother. And Jerry realized
that Laura Macpherson's maimed limb had not broken her heart. Laura was
a very new type to her guest.

"Oh, I get lonely sometimes and resentful sometimes," Laura went on,
"but we get over a good many little things in the day's run. And then I
have York, you know, and now and then a guest who means a great deal to
me. I have so many interests here, too. You'll like New Eden when you
really know us. And up here this porch has become my holy of holies.
There is something soothing and healing in the breezes that sweep up the
Sage Brush on summer evenings. There is something restful in the stretch
of silent prairie out there, and the wide starlit sky above it. Kansas
sooner or later always has a message for the sons and daughters of men."

"And something always interesting in our neighbors. See who approaches."
York, who had just come up the side steps, supplemented his sister's
remark.

"Oh, that is Mrs. Stella Bahrr, the Daily Evening News. Jerry, York can
always unhitch your wagon from its star. She really is his black beast,
though; but you can't expect mere men to take an interest in milliners,
make-overs, at that, however much interest they take in millinery and
what is under it."

"And millinery bills, with or