ounced the last word eyether.)

"That's what my desert man told me," said Helen May demurely, "only he
didn't tell me that way, exactly."

"Yes? Then I have no hesitation whatever in assuring you that your desert
man was unqualifiedly accurate in his statement of your need."

Helen May bit her lip. "Then I'll tell him," she said, still more
demurely.

Secretly she hoped that he would rise to the bait, but he apparently
accepted her words in good faith and went on telling her just how to
range goats far afield in good weather so that the grazing in the Basin
itself would be held in reserve for storms. It was a very grave error,
said Holman Sommers, to exhaust the pasturage immediately contiguous to
the home corral. It might almost be defined as downright improvidence.
Then he forestalled any resentment she might feel by apologizing for his
seeming presumption. But he apprehended the fact that she and her brother
were both inexperienced, and he would be sorry indeed to see them suffer
any loss because of that inexperience. His practical knowledge of the
business was at her service, he said, and he should feel that he was
culpably negligent of his duty as a neighbor if he failed to point out to
her any glaring fault in their method.

Helen May had felt just a little resentful of the words downright
improvidence. Had she not walked rather than spend money and grass on a
horse? Had she not daily denied herself things which she considered
necessities, that she might husband the precious balance of Peter's
insurance money? But she swallowed her resentment and thanked him quite
humbly for his kindness in telling her how to manage. She owned to her
inexperience, and she said that she would greatly appreciate any advice
which he might care to give.

Her Man of the Desert, she remembered, had not given her advice, though
he must have seen how badly she needed it. He had asked her where her dog
was, taking it for granted, apparently, that she would have one. But when
she had told him about not buying the dog, he had not said another word
about it. And he had not said anything about their letting the goats eat
up all the grass in the Basin, first thing, instead of saving it for bad
weather. This Holman Sommers, she decided, was awfully kind, even if he
did talk like a professor or something; kinder than her desert man. No,
not kinder, but perhaps more truly helpful.

At the house he told her just how to fix a "coolereupboard"