“Now, stop!” she said, commandingly, and raising an admonitory finger. “If you show any excitement I will go out of the room and leave Ming—”
“Don’t!” groaned Pratt.
“I shall certainly leave him in charge of you. You won’t talk to him.”
“No. If he doesn’t sit silent like a yellow graven image, he scatters ‘l’s’ all about the room until I want to get out of bed and sweep ’em up,” declared Pratt.
The ranchman’s daughter smiled at him, but shook her head. “Now! no more talking. I’ll sit here and promise not to scatter any of the alphabet broadcast; but you must keep still.”
“That’s mighty hard,” muttered the patient. “Sit over by the window. There! right in the sun. I like to see your hair when the sun burnishes it.”
Frances promptly removed her seat to the shady side of the room.
“Oh, please!” begged Pratt. “I’m sick, you know. You really ought to humor me.”
“And you really ought not to jolly me!” laughed the range girl. “I think you are a tease, Pratt.”
“Honest! I mean it.”