n all right,
only she can't cook, nor nothing."

"A housekeeper, and can't cook? How's that?"

Sim Gage wiped off his face, finding the temperature high for him.
"Well," said he, "Wid there and me, we advertised fer a housekeeper.
This girl come on out. And when she come she was blind."

"Blind!"

"Blind as a bat. So she says she's fooled me. I sort of felt like
we'd all fooled _her_. She's a lady."

"Why don't you send her back, man?" asked the doctor, with very visible
disgust.

"I can't. How can I, when she's blind? She wasn't born that way, Doc,
far's I can tell, but she was blind when she come out here. Now,
leaving her setting there alone, it makes me feel kind of nervous. You
don't blame me, now, do you, Doc?"

"No," said Dr. Barnes gravely, "I don't blame you. You people out here
get me guessing sometimes. But you make me tired."

He swept a hand across his face and eyes, just because he was tired.
"That's all I'm going to do for you to-day, my man," said he in
conclusion. "Go on back home and fight out your own woman
problems--that isn't in my line."

"She--I reckon she'd be glad to see you--if she could. You see, she's
a lady, Doc. She ain't like us people out here."

The physician looked at him with curious appraisal in his eyes,
studying both the man and this peculiar problem which all at once had
been brought to view.

"A lady?" said he at last, somewhat disgusted. "If she was any lady
she'd never have answered any advertisement such as you two people say
you have been fools enough to print."

"Look here! That ain't so," said Sim Gage with sudden heat. "That
ain't so none a-tall. Now, she is a lady--I won't let nobody say no
different. Only thing, she's a blind lady, that's all. She falls over
things when she walks. She got her eyes plumb full of cinders on the
train, I expect. Cinders is awful. Why, one time when I was going out
to Arizony I got a cinder in my eye, and I want to tell _you_----"

"Listen at him lie, Doc!" interrupted Wid Gardner. "He never was
nowhere near Arizony in his life. That's his favoright lie. But he's
telling you the truth, near as I know it, about that woman. She did
come out to be a housekeeper, and she did come out here blind. Now,
couldn't she be a lady and that be true?"

"How can I tell?" said Dr. Barnes. "All I know; is that you people
came down here and made me break loose from the best fish I've seen
since I've been out here