"There are only three so far. Three lambs and two mothers. It has n't really got started yet, but I 'm afraid it will. My herder ought to have got back yesterday and brought help along."
"Then you have a great deal to do?" queried Janet.
"Yes; after it once gets really started. Then it never rains but it pours. I have been hoping it would hold off a day or two longer; but you can't tell exactly."
He put more wood on the fire and took his place again.
"You mustn't let me interfere with your work," she suggested.
"Oh, that is n't it at all. I was just explaining. I'll get through somehow; it won't amount to anything."
With a characteristic sweep of his arm he waved the whole subject aside as if he did not want to have it interfere with her reading of the newspaper clipping. Janet had dropped it absent-mindedly in her lap; she now took it up again. Besides the tribute to Mrs. Brown's character, who was not a native of Texas but had come to the state in her girlhood from West Virginia, there was a considerable memoir of Stephen Brown, senior, relating his activities and adventures as a Texas patriot. He had "crossed the Great Divide" six years before. Finally, there was a paragraph of sympathy with the only son, "one of our most valued citizens."
"Your father knew Houston, did n't he?" remarked Janet.
"Oh, yes; he knew a lot about him."
"How interesting that must have been. Your father was a pioneer, was n't he?"