eper here, and because he did want a girl--Virginia!"
Horace Carey said the name softly. "I know what her jessamine-draped
window looked out upon. I hardly realized when I was here before what
Asher's early home had been. Yet those two for love of each other are
building their lives into the life of their chosen State. It is the tiller
of the soil who must make the West. But how many times in the lonely days
in that little sod cabin must they have remembered their childhood homes!
How many times when the hot fall winds swept across the dead brown prairie
have their memories turned to the beauty of the October days here in the
East! Oh, well, the heroes weren't all killed at Lexington and Bunker
Hill, nor at Bull Run and Gettysburg. Some of them got away, and with
heroic wives went out to conquer the plains from the harsh rule of Nature
there."

When the doctor went downstairs again, a little girl met him, saying,
"Miss Jane says you may sit in the parlor, or out on the meranda, till
supper is ready."

"How pleasant! Won't you come and sit with me?" Doctor Carey replied.

"I must put the--the lap-robes on the tables to everybody's plate, and the
knives and forks and poons. Nen I'll come," she answered.

Carey sat on the veranda enjoying the minutes and waiting for the little
girl.

"What is your name?" he asked when she appeared, and climbed into Miss
Jane's vacant chair.

"Leigh Shirley. What's yours?"

"Horace Carey."

The doctor could not keep from smiling as he looked at her. She was so
little and pretty, with yellow hair, big blue eyes, china-doll cheeks, and
with all the repose of manner that only childhood and innocence can
bestow.

"I think I like you, Horace," Leigh said frankly, after carefully looking
Carey over.

"Then, we'll be friends," he declared.

"Not for so mery long." Leigh could not master the V of the alphabet yet.
"'Cause I'm going away pretty soon, Miss Jane say. You know my mamma's
dead." The little face was very grave now. "And my Uncle Jim out in Kansas
wants me. I'm going to him."

Even in her innocence, Doctor Carey noted the very definite tone and clear
trend of the young mind.

"Miss Jane loves me and I love her," Leigh explained further. "Don't you
love Miss Jane, Horace?"

"Certainly," Carey said, with some hesitancy.

"I'll tell her so. She will love you, too. She is mery sweet," Leigh
assured him. "Where are you going to?"

"I'm going back to Kansas soon."

"Wim