I've sent for your old friend, Annie Squires!" said she.

"Annie! Why--no! She wrote to me----"

"Yes, I know. And I wired her. She's coming on out. She has left
Cleveland to-day. I'm going to meet her myself at the station, and
bring her out. If she can cook she can get on the pay roll. Odd, how
you two came to meet----"

--"Why, cook?--work?--of course Annie could! Of course--she'd be
happy. She's alone, like myself--but not married."

"And she'll find you happily married, as she said in the letter. You
are happily married? I beg your pardon, but he's--he's been
considerate?"

"More. Chivalrous. He wrote me at first that I might expect to find a
'chivalrous ranchman, of ample means.' That's true, isn't it?"

For a long time he sat silent. "Yes," said he, "I believe I'll say
that's true!

"You think this Annie person can cook?" he added.

"Of course! Oh, do you suppose she _really_ is coming?"

"If I'm going to be a Major again I'm going to have plenary powers!"

"Well, Major," she smiled slowly at last, "you seem to have a way of
ordering things! Tell me about yourself. I mean about you, yourself,
personally. I've no way of getting the commonest notion of people any
more. It's very, very hard."

He went on quickly, warned by the quiver of her lips. "All right,"
said he. "I'll fill out my questionnaire. This registrant is Barnes,
Major Allen, age thirty-one, Medical Corps, assigned to special service
Engineers' detail, power dam of the Transcontinental Light and Power
Company; graduate of Johns Hopkins; height eleven feet five inches--you
see, I've felt all of that tall ever since I got to be a Major. Eyes,
gray; hair, sandy. Mobility of chest, four and a half inches.
Features, clean-cut and classical. Good muscular development.
Stature, erect and robust. Blood pressure, 128. Pulse, full and
regular. Habits, very bad. Three freckles on left hand."

"Dear me!" she said, smiling in spite of all, and thus evincing
definitely a certain dimple in her left cheek which now he noticed in
confirmation of his earlier suspicion. "Bad habits?"

"Well, I smoke, and everything, you know. Majors have to be regular
fellows."

"You're rather pleasant to talk to!"

"Very!"

"You know, you seem rather a manny sort of man to me--do you know what
I mean?"

"I'm glad you think so."

"And I owe you a great deal, Major--or--Doctor."

"Please don't make yourself a continuous trial bala