up to. "It's for children,
isn't it?"

"I reckon it's for every one with the right stuff in 'em," said Nick.
"Anyhow, I haven't grown up enough to get beyond it. I don't mean ever to
turn the boy that lives inside of me out-of-doors. If I ever do anything
to make him so mad that he quits, I'll be finished--dried up. That book,
_The Arabian Nights_, has got a dead clinch on me. You know, when I run
into Bakersfield, I like to have a browse in the bookstores. It sort of
rests me, and seein' the pictures in that book made me buy it--a birthday
present for my affectionate self----"

"Your birthday!" Carmen broke in, tired of this book talk, but not tired
of anything that concerned him. "You never told me. That was bad of you.
How old, Nick? I'm not sure to a year or so."

"Twenty-nine. Quite some age, isn't it? But there's lots I want to do
before I'm old. I don't know, though, as I mean ever to be old."

"Of course, you never will be." Carmen agreed with him aloud, but she was
thinking in an undertone: "Only twenty-nine, and I'm thirty-three. He
won't be old ever, or for a long time, but I will. I'm that kind, I'm
afraid. My mother was. I've got no time to lose; but to-day's mine. Nick
must love me really, though maybe he's too used to me to know it, without
being stirred up by something unusual. But I'll try my hardest to make him
know it to-night."

"Go on about your 'Arabian Nights,'" she said, to give herself time for
the arranging of her tactics.

"Oh, well, all I really began to say was this: I was reading the story of
Aladdin and an enchanted cave of jewels he dropped into. There was a magic
ring and a lamp in the story too, that you could rub and get pretty near
anything you wanted; so I was thinking this irrigation business of ours in
California is like rubbing that lamp. It throws open doors of dark caves
in deserts, and gives up enchanted gardens full of jewelled fruit and
flowers. Then rub the smoky old lamp again and you get a spout of
oil--another gift, which makes you feel as if a genie'd chucked it to you.
Look at my gusher, for instance! Just think, Mrs. Gaylor, if you don't
mind my talking this way about, myself--you sold me my land, sliced it
right off your own ranch--let me have it darn cheap, too, when the boss
died----"

"I wanted to keep you as near as possible, Nick, when people began to be
silly and say I oughtn't to have a young man like you on the place as
foreman, with me alone, and Eld