is
wearing off and her new life is a reality. She is confronted with the
grim and appalling necessity of adapting herself to a completely new
and bewildering set of conditions. I'm not sure that she will be equal
to it."

"I presume you mean that she is sensitive."

"Supersensitive! And ambitious! That's the trouble. If she were dull
and conceited she could be both happy and contented. But she's bright,
and she lacks egotism, so she'll never be either. Adversity would
temper a girl like her; prosperity may--spoil her."

"There is a boy, too, isn't there?"

"Oh, Buddy! He's away at school. He'll make a hand, or--well, if he
doesn't, I'll beat the foolishness out of him. I've assumed complete
responsibility for Buddy, and he'll be a credit to me."

There was a tone in Gray's voice when he spoke of the Briskows that
gave Barbara Parker a wholly new insight into his character; it was
with a feeling that she knew him and liked him better that she said:

"You think a lot of those nesters, don't you?"

"More than they believe, and more than I would have thought possible,"
he readily declared. "I'm a lonesome institution. There's nobody
dependent upon me; I owe no bills, no gratitude, and I've canceled the
obligations that others owe me. You've no idea how unnecessary I am. It
gives me a pleasing sense of importance, therefore, to feel that I fill
a place in somebody's affairs."

Wichita Falls's facilities for public entertainment reflected perhaps
as correctly as anything else the general chaos consequent upon its
swift expansion into a city. Such hotels as had been capable of caring
for the transient trade of pre-petroleum days were full and carried
waiting lists like exclusive clubs; rooming houses and private
dwellings were crowded. A new and modern fireproof hotel was stretching
skeleton fingers of steel skyward, but meanwhile the task of
sheltering, and especially of feeding three times a day, the hungry
hordes that bulged the sides of the little city was a difficult one. To
wrest possession of a cafe table for two at the rush hour was an
undertaking almost as hazardous as jumping a mining claim, but Calvin
Gray succeeded and eventually he and "Bob" found themselves facing each
other over a discolored tablecloth, reading a soiled menu card to a
perspiring waiter. It was in some ways an ideal retreat for a
tete-a-tete, for the bellowed orders, the rattle of crockery, the voice
of the hungry food battlers, and the