es back."

"Better than gold! Your plans just fall together and fit in, don't they?"
Thaine exclaimed. "Will he be back in time, though?"

"Yes. But really, Thaine," Leigh's eyes were beautiful in the twilight, "I
never should have thought of Doctor Carey if it hadn't been for you."

"I am of some use to the community after all," Thaine said with serious
face.

"You are a great deal of use to me," Leigh assured him.

"Oh, anybody else could do all I do for you," he retorted.

"But I wouldn't ask anybody else," the girl replied.

"Not even my mother? She thinks there is no girl like you this side of
heaven, or Virginia, anyhow, and she'd have taken it up with father,"
Thaine declared.

"I thought of her," Leigh answered, "but in things like this, it is
impossible. You said yourself that no man on Grass River would think it a
wise plan. Your father won his fight out here, even his fight against the
boom. We have a different wilderness to overcome, I guess. Mine is
reclaiming that Cloverdale ranch from the Champers Company and the weeds.
I don't know where your battlefield lies, but you'll have it, and it's
because you haven't won yet that I can come to you. You have helped me and
you always will."

"I'm glad you came to me, anyhow," Thaine assured her.

They sat awhile looking out at the prairies and the line of the river
glistening in the gloaming. A faint pink tone edged some gray cloud flakes
in the southwest sky and all the scene was restful in the soft evening
light.

At last Thaine said thoughtfully: "I haven't heard the bugle trumpet for
my call to battle yet. Maybe I'll find out down at the University and make
everybody proud of me some day as I am proud of you in your fight for a
weed-covered quarter of prairie soil. Jo Bennington is always ridiculing
country life, and yet she's pretty fond of Todd Stewart, who is more of a
farmer every day."

A little smile curved the corners of Leigh's mouth, and Thaine knew her
thoughts.

"You are not a bit alike, you two girls," he exclaimed.

"Does it make any difference? There's only one of a kind of anything in
this world, flower or fruit or leaf or life," Leigh added. "I found that
out in painting. There's only one Jo, and one Pryor Gaines, and one Jane
Aydelot as I remember her back in Ohio; one anything or anybody."

"And only one Leigh in all the world."

It was not the usual bantering tone now, and there was something in the
expression of Thaine's