decidedly! The prices are all plainly marked. Please look them
over."

Ma Briskow did as urged, but the shock was paralyzing; delight,
admiration, expectancy, gave place to horrified amazement at the
figures upon the tags. She shook her head slowly and made repeated
sounds of disapproval.

"Tse! Tse! Tse! Why, your pa's crazy! Plumb crazy!"

Although the mother's principal emotion for the moment was aroused by
the price marks on the price tags, Allegheny paid little attention to
them and began vainly fitting ring after ring to her fingers. All were
too small, however; most of them refused to pass even the first joint,
and Gray realized now what Gus Briskow had meant when he wrote for
rings "of large sises." Eventually the girl found one that slipped into
place, and this she regarded with complacent admiration.

"This one'll do for me," she declared. "And it's a whopper!"

Gray took her hand in his; as yet it had not been greatly distorted by
manual labor, but the nails were dull and cracked and ragged and they
were inlaid in deep mourning. "I don't believe you'll like that
mounting," he said, gently. "It's what we call a man's ring. This is
the kind women usually wear." He held up a thin platinum band of
delicate workmanship which Allegheny examined with frank disdain.

[Image: "THIS ONE'LL DO FOR ME," SHE DECLARED. "AND IT'S A WHOPPER!"]

"Pshaw! I'd bust that the first time I hoed a row of 'taters," she
declared. "I got to have things stout, for me."

"But," Gray protested, in even a milder voice, "you probably wouldn't
want to wear expensive jewelry in the garden."

Miss Briskow held her hand high, admiring the play of light upon the
facets of the splendid jewel, then she voiced a complacent thought that
has been variously expressed by other women better circumstanced than
she--"If we can afford to buy 'em, I reckon we can afford to wear 'em."

Not until Gray had suggested that her days of work in the fields were
probably about ended did the girl's expression change. Then indeed her
interest was arrested. She regarded him with a sudden quickening of
imagination; she revolved the novel idea in her mind.

"From what my driver has told me about the Briskow farm," he ran on,
"you won't have to work at anything, unless you care to."

Allie continued to weigh this new thought in her mind; that it
intrigued her was plain, but she made no audible comment.

CHAPTER V

For perhaps half an hour the women t