ou said. I never heard of any of them doing
it, except figuratively, in the regular army."

Nola suspended her brushing and looked at Frances curiously, a deeper
color rising and spreading in her animated face.

"Oh, you little goose!" said she.

"Mostly they hang around and make trouble for people and fools of
themselves," said Frances, in half-thoughtful vein, her back to her
visitor, who had stopped brushing now, and was winding, a comb in her
mouth.

Nola held her quick hand at the half-finished coil of hair while she
looked narrowly at the outline of Frances' form against the window. A
little squint of perplexity was in her eyes, and furrows in her smooth
forehead. Presently she finished the coil with dextrous turn, and held
it with outspread hand while she reached to secure it with the comb.

"I can't make you out sometimes, Frances, you're so funny," she
declared. "I'm afraid to talk to you half the time"--which was in no
part true--"you're so nunnish and severe."

"Oh!" said Frances, fully discounting the declaration.

No wonder that Major King was hard to wean from her, thought Nola,
with all that grace of body and charm of word. Superiority had been
born in Frances Landcraft, not educated into her in expensive schools,
the cattleman's daughter knew. It spoke for itself in the carriage of
her head there against the light of that fair new day, with the
sunshine on the dying cottonwood leaves beyond the windowpane; in the
lifting of her neck, white as King David's tower of shields.

"Well, I _am_ half afraid of you sometimes," Nola persisted. "I draw
my hand back from touching you when you've got one of your soaring
fits on you and walk along like you couldn't see common mortals and
cowmen's daughters."

"Well, everybody isn't like you, Nola; there are some who treat me
like a child."

Frances was thinking of her father and Major King, both of whom had
continued to overlook and ignore her declaration of severance from her
plighted word. The colonel had brushed it aside with rough hand and
sharp word; the major had come penitent and in suppliance. But both of
them were determined to marry her according to schedule, with no
weight to her solemn denial.

"Mothers do that, right along," Nola nodded.

"Here's somebody else up early"--Frances held the curtain aside as she
spoke, and leaned a little to see--"here's your father, just turning
in."

"The senor boss?" said Nola, hurrying to the window.

S