onotony w'en your fair and
beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house." I opened my
starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger,
the Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the
school-teacher's. "I am French--you see--temperamental--nervous! I
cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but--a woman
comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 'rahs and a tiger. "What a
difference! All is light and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile. You
have 'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel your
'eart. So!" He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage
point he suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand, "Ah!
Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how I ad--"

"Dinner," remarked George. He was standing just behind the Frenchman's
ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher's eyes. After
thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, frozen
maelstrom of his face: "Dinner," he concluded, "will be ready in two
minutes."

Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I must get ready for
dinner," she said brightly, and went into her room.

Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned
away, I waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily
ours alone, and told him what had happened.

He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking.
"Yeller-hided, unwashed, palm-readin' skunk," he said under his breath.
"I'll shoot him full o' holes if he don't watch out--talkin' that way
to my wife!"

I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. "Your wife!" I
gasped.

"Well, I mean to make her that," he announced.

The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pent-up
emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers.

Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a
hawk does a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a
henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross.

The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish.
Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where
for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher's vision locked in
and turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine
introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of
finding relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew into other
discomforts. Even in he