“Right you are, Lon!” agreed the other old man.
Frances smiled quietly to hear them plan. She put her needle in and out of the work she was doing slowly. By and by her fingers stopped altogether and she looked away across the ranges.
She, too, was planning. She was seeing herself living in a college town the next winter, with daddy for company, while Mr. Lonergan and Pratt and his mother remained on at the Bar-T.
She saw herself graduating after a few years from some advanced school, quite the equal of Pratt in education. Meanwhile he would be learning to change the vast Bar-T ranges into wheat and milo fields, and taking up the new farming that is revolutionizing the Panhandle.
And after that–and after that—?
“How about Ming bringing us a pitcher of nice cool lemonade, eh, Frances?” said the Captain, breaking in upon her day-dream.
“All right, Daddy. I’ll tell him,” said Frances of the Ranges.
THE END