d then in sheer excess of emotion over the demand of his
monotonous life.

The girl held a letter in her lap, turning the pages with one
unincumbered hand, and lifting her flushed face with a contemptuous "Oh,
Barney, you goose!" as the colt drew himself into attitudes of quivering
fright, which dissolved suddenly at the sound of her voice and the
knowledge that another young creature viewed his coquettish terrors with
the disrespect born of comprehension. As they turned into the lane west
of the house, Ethel folded her letter and thrust it hastily into her
pocket, and the colt darted through the open gate and drew up at the
side door with a transparent assumption of serious purpose suggested by
the proximity of oats.

"Ed!" called the girl, "the next time you hitch up Barney for me, I wish
you'd put a kicking-strap on him. I had a picnic with him coming down
the hill by Arbuckle's."

Ed maintained the gruff silence of the half-grown rural male as he
climbed into the buggy beside his sister and cramped the wheel for her
to dismount.

"They haven't any quart jars over at the store, mother," said Ethel,
entering the house and walking across to the mirror to remove her hat.
"They're expecting some every day. Well, I do look like the Witch of
Endor!" she exclaimed, twisting her loosened rope of hair and skewering
it in place with a white celluloid pin. "That colt acted as if he was
possessed."

"Oh, I'm sorry about the jars," said Mrs. Weaver regretfully. "I wanted
to finish putting up the curr'n's to-morrow."

"Did you get any mail?" quavered grandmother Moxom.

"I got a letter from Rob."

There was a little hush in the room. The girl stood still before the
mirror, with a sense of support in the dim reflection of her own face.

"Is he well?" ventured the old woman feebly, glancing toward her
daughter-in-law.

"Yes, he's well; he's got steady work on some road up the mountain. He
writes as if people keep going up, but he never tells what they go up
for. He said something about a lot of burros, and at first I thought he
was in a furniture store, but I found out he meant mules. An old man
keeps them, and hires them out to people. Rob calls him 'old Mosey.'
They're keeping bach together. Rob tried to make biscuits, and he says
they tasted like castor oil."

As her granddaughter talked, Mrs. Moxom seemed to shrink deeper and
deeper into the patchwork cushion of her chair.

"Rob wants me to come out there and be