"Gee, but you do lie easy," said Annie. "You're the smoothest running liar I ever did see."
"And all my books and things, and pictures and dishes."
"All of your both two tin plates, huh?"
"And my other suits of clothes, and my bedstead, and my dewingport, and everything—all, all gone, Miss Squires!"
"Is that so! Oh, sad! sad! You must of been reading some of them mail order catalogues in your dreams."
"And my cook stove too. I've just been cooking out in the open air when I couldn't stand your cooking here no more—out of doors, like I was camping out."
"If any sheep herder was ever worse than you two, God help him! You wasn't one of you fit for her to wipe a foot on,—that doctor least of all, that got me out here under pretences that she was married happy. And I find her married to that! I wish to God she could see all this, and see you all, for just one minute. Just once, that's all!"
"Yes," said Wid Gardner, suddenly serious. "I know. There ain't nothing I can do to square it. But all I've got or expect to have—why, it's free for you to take along and do anything you can for her and your own self, Miss Annie, if you want to, even if you do go away and leave us.
"But look at my land over there." He swept a long arm toward the waving grasses of the valley. "I've got my land all clear. She's worth fifty a acre as she lays, and'll be worth a hundred and fifty when I get water out of the creek on to her. I got three hundred and twenty acres under fence. I been saving the money the Doc's paying me here.
"Say," he added, presently, "what kind of a place is that Niagry place I been reading about? Is it far from Cleveland?"