ed in her only a dull
wonder. Why was Abbie looking so strangely at her? If only that tiresome
clock would cease its muttering! What was this strange thing now
happening to her, this slipping away of a part of herself, this new and
perturbing sense of sudden oldness and wisdom and--and heart-wrenching
fear! For a moment she plucked petulantly at the velvet band about her
throat; the room seemed reeling about her and she swayed unsteadily on
her feet.

With a cry of keen self-reproach, Abigail threw her arm around the
tottering girl and bore her into the darkened bedroom. When she emerged
later it was with a sorely troubled mien.

"I'm not quite settled in my mind thet I've done ther right thing in
tellin' her so suddenly. Still, since he's goin' ter do it she hed best
be prepared. Pore lamb! Why didn't Ken finish ther job in thu fust place
and be done with it! Now it'll come between 'em an' like as not she
won't hav' him on account of it. Ther Lawd do move in myster'ous ways
fer a fac'! An' they do say thet ther trail o' troo love is rough an'
crooked. An' them sech a well-matched span, too!"

Abigail had evidently jumped to conclusions of her own, in her
range-born simplicity overlooking the obvious disparity that a more
captious conventionality would have interposed between the respective
social planes of a society blossom and a "wild and woolly" cowpuncher.
And if she had drawn any comparisons they would have been indubitably
in favor of the latter. For in her environment she had acquired the
faculty of properly estimating the worth of a real man. And then, again,
Abigail was a woman, and there is a proverb about the contempt of
familiarity.

"I reckon 'twer ther heat," she opined barefacedly when the young woman,
a girl no longer since the ticking of that clock, expressed her
inability to account for her sudden indisposition. "I heve nevah fainted
mahself; reckon I wouldn't know how," with a grim attempt at jocularity.
"Nevah had the time, anyhow. Yuh feelin' peart again, honey?"

Grace assented languidly. The antelope kid, fed to repletion, was
blinking at her from his blanket nest in the corner. As she spoke he
arose and wabbled over to her side, laying his cool, moist muzzle
against her hand.

"Jest look at thet, now!" said Abbie delightedly. "Thu leetle cuss wants
ter be petted an' coddled. Well, he's like all other he-critters, got
ter be humored an' made much of, whether they desarve it or not. An' I
g