your shack wouldn't make much of a Broadway restaurant."
She shook her head with quaint solemnity. "Guess I never could get you
right. Here you run a ranch, and make quite big with it, yet you never
eat off a china plate, or spread your table with anything better than
a newspaper. True, Charlie, you've got me beaten to death. Why, how
you manage to run a ranch and make it pay is a riddle that 'ud put the
poor old Sphinx's nose plump out of joint. I----"

Kate suddenly turned a pair of darkly frowning eyes upon her sister.

"You're talking a whole heap of nonsense," she declared severely.
"What has the care of a home to do with making a ranch pay?"

Helen's eyes opened wide with mischief.

"Say, Kate," she cried with a great air of patronage, "you have a
whole heap to learn. Big Brother Bill's coming right along from
Broadway, with money and--notions. He's just bursting with them.
Charlie's a prosperous rancher. What does B. B. B. expect? Why, he'll
get around with fancy clothes and suitcases and trunks. He'll dream of
rides over the boundless plains, of cow-punchers with guns and things.
He'll have visions of big shoots, and any old sport, of a
well-appointed ranch house, with proper fixings, and baths, and swell
dinners and servants. But they're all visions. He'll blow in to Rocky
Springs--he's a whirlwind, mind--and he'll find a prosperous rancher
living in a tumbled-down shanty that hasn't been swept this side of
five years, a blanket-covered bunk, and a table made of packing cases
with the remains of last week's meals on it. That's what he'll find.
Prosperous rancher, indeed. Say, Charlie," she finished up with fine
scorn, "you know as much about living as Kate's two hired men, and
dear knows they only exist." Suddenly she broke out into a rippling
laugh. "And this is what my future husband is coming to. It's--it's an
insult to me."

The girl paused, looking from one to the other with dancing eyes. But
the more sober-minded Kate slipped her arm about her waist and began
to move down the hill.

"Come along, dear," she said. "I must get right on down to the
Meeting House. I--have work to do. You would chatter on all day if I
let you."

In a moment Helen was all indignant protest.

"I like that. Say, did you hear, Charlie? She's accusing me, and all
the time it's you doing the talking. But there, I'm always
misjudged--always. She'll accuse me of trying to trap your
brother--next. Anyway, I've got work to do,