around
the corner of the house, and set her bowl of butter upon the broad, flat
rock which just missed being overflowed with water, and sighed again.

"I'm afraid it isn't going to work," she murmured aloud; for Phoebe,
having lived much of her life in the loneliness which the West means
to women, frequently talked to herself. "She's such a nice little
thing--but the boys don't take to her like I thought they would. I don't
see as she's having a mite of influence on their manners, unless it's to
make them act worse, just to shock her. Clark USED to take off his hat
when he come into the house most every time. And great grief! Now he'd
wear it and his chaps and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take
them off. She's nice--she's most too nice. I've got to give that girl a
good talking to."

She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried the kitchen door, and
found it locked. She went around to the door on the west side, opposite
the gate, found that also secured upon the inside, and passed grimly to
the next.

"My grief! I didn't know any of these doors COULD be locked!" she
muttered angrily. "They never have been before that I ever heard of."
She stopped before Evadna's window, and saw, through a slit in the green
blind, that the old-fashioned bureau had been pulled close before it.
"My grief!" she whispered disgustedly, and retraced her steps to
the east side, which, being next to the pond, was more secluded.
She surveyed dryly a window left wide open there, gathered her
brown-and-white calico dress close about her plump person, and crawled
grimly through into the sitting-room, where, to the distress of Phoebe's
order-loving soul, the carpet was daily well-sanded with the tread of
boys' boots fresh from outdoors, and where cigarette stubs decorated
every window-sill, and the stale odor of Peaceful's pipe was never long
absent.

She went first to all the outer rooms, and unlocked every one of the
outraged doors which, unless in the uproar and excitement of racing,
laughing boys pursuing one another all over the place with much slamming
and good-natured threats of various sorts, had never before barred the
way of any man, be he red or white, came he at noon or at midnight.

Evadna's door was barricaded, as Phoebe discovered when she turned the
knob and attempted to walk in. She gave the door an indignant push, and
heard a muffled shriek within, as if Evadna's head was buried under her
pillow.

"My grief! A b