dy to your hand," he replied eagerly.
She ran out excitedly, as if to verify the good news; but once in the
seclusion of the pantry her interest in the broilers moderated
unaccountably. She seemed more concerned with the hollows of her arms
and in her rapt inspection of them held them singularly close to her
face. Her cheeks were engagingly flushed and her lips moist when she
bore the fowls into the kitchen.

Douglass was inclined to be patronizing as she sat about her
waffle-building; what could this pampered society pet possibly know
about the plebeian craft of cookery? But his indulgence quickly changed
to surprised admiration as he watched her deft manipulations.

"How long has it been since you were a little girl?" She smiled her
quick delight at the implied compliment. "Oh, waffles are easy; Dad
always insisted on my making them for him and I had considerable
experience, and one does not exactly forget little things like that. How
long has it been since you were a little boy?"

"I am one to-night," he averred, dextrously filching the first
golden-brown disc as she laid it on the plate; as he danced about
trying to bolt the hot dainty she rapped him on the head reprovingly
with the huge spoon and they laughed with all the light-heartedness of
the foolish children they really were.

It was a memorable meal that they finally sat down to, and neither of
them ever forgot it. Sitting opposite to her in that comfortable old
kitchen--he had begged the privilege of eating there instead of in the
more formal dining-room--the man's heart was filling with a subtle
consciousness that it would be very pleasant to have her sit so always
throughout the days to come. It came to him with a certain shock,
nevertheless; in all his former associations with women, his emotions
had been of a distinctly different nature, and somehow the recollection
of them was not pleasing. He even felt a certain angry resentment of the
insidious charm of the comforting domesticity of his surroundings. What
right had an indigent pauper of a cowpuncher to aspire to a heaven like
this? It was only to her natural gentleness, her inherent graciousness,
possibly only to a passing indulgent whim, that he was indebted for the
favor she was showing. What had he, who would be penniless in another
month--for he still stubbornly adhered to his determination to recoup
his employer--to offer the mistress of the C Bar with its broad acres
and "cattle on a thousan