“Suppose we try it, anyway,” he suggested. “Maybe he’ll like me despite himself. Do I sound egotistical—too confident? But maybe we can break him of this newly formed habit.”
“I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “He and I had a long talk last night. He came home and found me irrigating the alfalfa. You see, I’d begun to realize what a useless life I’ve been living. I think I grew up in a day when I saw Wing o’ the Crow sticking pigs and driving a team, then hurrying to camp to get a meal for the stiffs. So I decided to remodel my life. I went home, and as there was nothing I could do in the house, I put on rubber boots and went to irrigating. I had tried to help Wing-o, but I proved a failure at sticking pigs. I was hopeless for a time, then suddenly I realized that I was trying to do something out of my sphere, and that that was the trouble. So I went home and began in my own sphere to make amends. And then pa took me to the house; it was then that we had our talk.”
“And do you wish to tell me about it?”
“Well, he said irrigating wasn’t my sphere, either. He wants me to practice more on the piano and study more and do housework—if I must work—and not run around so much, and—and——”
“Yes?”
“Well, grow up a little more, he said—and think about getting married and settling down.”
“Good advice, I should say.”
“And he said I ought to take more interest in the men he brings to the ranch from Los Angeles sometimes, and in—in Hunter Mangan.”
“Oh!”
“Mangan has lots of money, pa says; and he’s not so terribly old—twenty-nine. Of course, you know he comes over to Squawtooth often. Pa invites him. And, by the way, he’s to be there for supper to-morrow night. So you wouldn’t want to come then.”