ox, motherly fashion.

"Yes, ma'am, not very near," he was betrayed into saying--and she
might make what she could of it. He had not said "ma'am" before since
he had gone to school.

"Oh, I've heard how you Western folks measure distances," she teased.
"About how many miles?"

"About twenty."

"I suppose that is not far, to you knights of the plains. At home it
would be called a _dreadfully_ long journey. Why, I have known numbers
of old men and women who have never been so far from their own doors
in their lives! What would you think, I wonder, of their little forty
acre farms?"

Andy had been brought to his sixteenth tumultuous birthday on a
half-acre in the edge of a good-sized town, but he did not say so. He
shook his head vaguely and said he didn't know. Andy Green, however,
was not famous for clinging ever to the truth.

"You out here in this great, wide, free land, with the free winds ever
blowing and the clouds--"

"Will you pass the butter, please?" Andy hated to interrupt, but he
was hungry.

The strange lady passed the butter and sent with it a smile. "I have
read and heard so much about this wild, free life, and my heart has
gone out to the noble fellows living their lonely life with their
cattle and their faithful dogs, lying beside their camp-fires at night
while the stars stood guard--"

Andy forgot his personal embarrassment and began to perk up his ears.
This was growing interesting.

"--And I have felt how lonely they must be, with their rude fare and
few pleasures, and what a field there must be among them for a great
and noble work; to uplift them and bring into their lonely lives a
broader, deeper meaning; to help them to help themselves to be better,
nobler men and women--"

"We don't have any lady cowpunchers out here," interposed Andy mildly.

The strange lady had merely gone astray a bit, being accustomed to
addressing Mothers' Meetings and the like. She recovered herself
easily. "Nobler men, the bulwarks of our nation." She stopped and eyed
Andy archly. Andy, having observed that her neck was scrawny, with
certain cords down the sides that moved unpleasantly when she talked,
tried not to look.

"I wonder if you can guess what brings me out here, away from home and
friends! Can you guess?"

Andy thought of several things, but he could not feel that it would be
polite to mention them. Agent for complexion stuff, for instance, and
next to that, wanting a husband. He shook his h