uffering and toiling; to be petted, humored,
condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted a
singularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit of
ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible
murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at
times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of
the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with
such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident
labor involved as to reduce him to silence.

Accustomed as Mr. Harkutt was to his wife's peculiarity, he was not
above assuming a certain slightly fatigued attitude befitting it. "Yes,"
he said, with a vague sigh, "where's Clemmie?"

"Lyin' down since dinner; she reckoned she wouldn't get up to supper,"
she returned soothingly. "Phemie's goin' to take her up some sass and
tea. The poor dear child wants a change."

"She wants to go to 'Frisco, and so do I, pop," said Phemie, leaning
her elbow half over her father's plate. "Come, pop, say do,--just for a
week."

"Only for a week," murmured the commiserating Mrs. Harkutt.

"Perhaps," responded Harkutt, with gloomy sarcasm, "ye wouldn't mind
tellin' me how you're goin' to get there, and where the money's comin'
from to take you? There's no teamin' over Tasajara till the rain stops,
and no money comin' in till the ranchmen can move their stuff. There
ain't a hundred dollars in all Tasajara; at least there ain't been the
first red cent of it paid across my counter for a fortnit! Perhaps if
you do go you wouldn't mind takin' me and the store along with ye, and
leavin' us there."

"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Harkutt, with sympathetic but shameless
tergiversation. "Don't bother your poor father, Phemie, love; don't you
see he's just tired out? And you're not eatin' anything, dad."

As Mr. Harkutt was uneasily conscious that he had been eating heartily
in spite of his financial difficulties, he turned the subject abruptly.
"Where's John Milton?"

Mrs. Harkutt shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed meditatively on
the floor before the fire and in the chimney corner for her only son,
baptized under that historic title. "He was here a minit ago," she said
doubtfully. "I really can't think where he's gone. But," assuringly, "it
ain't far."

"He's skipped with one o' those story-books he's borrowed," said Phemie.
"He's always doin' it. Like as not he's