the
foreman not to come. But I warn you that this social recognition will
serve as no excuse if I catch him picking any more green apricots."

Mrs. Tiffany, unturned by this breeze of criticism, ran along on her
own tack.

"His manners _are_ a little forward, but he has a nice way of
speaking. I'm sure he is a gentleman, at bottom. You can't expect such
a young man, who has been obliged to work his way, to have all the
graces at once. They've brought down their town clothes--I saw them
last Sunday--so you needn't be afraid of that. I've asked Mr. Heath,
too."

"Is that by way of another introduction?" asked Judge Tiffany. His
eyes looked at her severely, but his beard showed that he was smiling
gently again. Half his joy in a welded marriage lay in his
appreciation of her humors, as though one should laugh at himself.

"Oh, there's no doubt that _he's_ a gentleman. He is less loud,
somehow, than Mr. Chester, though he hasn't his charm. It seems there
is the most wonderful boy friendship between them."

"Where did you get all this insight into the social life of our
employees?" asked Judge Tiffany; and then, "Mattie, you've been
exposing yourself to the night air again."

"Over at their camp last evening," said Mrs. Tiffany. "Well, and isn't
it my business to look after--after that side of the ranch?" she
added.

The Judge had dropped the book now; his senses were alert to the game
which never grew old to him--"Mattie-baiting" he had named it.

"Mattie," he said, "with a pretty and marriageable, dowered and maiden
niece on your hands, a new era is opening in your life of passionate
self-sacrifice. It used to be orphan children and neglected wives of
farm hands. Now it is presentable but neglected bachelors. Your
darling match for Eleanor, I suppose, would be some young soul
snatched from evil courses, pruned, trimmed, and delivered at the
altar with 'Made by Mattie Tiffany' branded on his wings. Spare, O
spare your innocent niece!"

"Edward, I never thought of it in that light!" cried Mrs. Tiffany; and
she bent herself to furious crocheting. After a time, and when the
Judge had resumed his book, she looked up and added:

"It might be worse, though, than a young man who had made it all
himself."

Judge Tiffany burst into laughter. Then, seeing her bend closer over
her pink yarns, he grew grave, reached for the hand which held the
needles, and kissed it.

That was her reward of childless matrimony, as the