“Poor father,” and the girl’s voice was full of tenderness. “You’re not discouraged, are you, dear?”
“No, Prairie Bell, but I reckon I’m gettin’ old, an’ I can’t get up the fight I used to. I thought I had my hands full with the rustlers, but now with the sheep comin’—well, between you and me, little girl, I wish I had somebody to stand up and take the licks.”
“There’s Mike; he certainly can give and take a few.”
“Yes, of course I’ve got Mike, but, when you’re all done, he’s only a foreman, an’ his interest don’t go much beyond his seventy-five a month an’ grub. Yet—by George!” He sat suddenly 78 erect and slapped his thigh with his disengaged hand.
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothin’.” They talked on in the affectionate, intimate way that had always characterized their relations since Julie had been a girl just big enough to listen to involved harangues about cattle without actually going to sleep. In the course of an hour Bissell suddenly asked:
“Did you ever think of marryin’, Prairie Bell?”
“If thinking ever helped any, I would have been a Mormon by this time.”
“Well, you are growed up, ain’t you?” and Bissell spoke in the wondering tone of a man who has just realized a self-evident fact “Fancy my little girl old enough to marry! How old are you, anyhow? ’Bout eighteen?”
“Twenty-five, you dear, old goose. Eighteen! The idea.”