“You’re easy, Earl; dad’s workin’ you for three good years without pay. As far as I’m concerned, you’d just as well hit the breeze out of this country right now. Dad can’t deliver the goods.”
“I’m soft, but I’m not that soft, Joan. I could leave here tomorrow; what’s to hold me? And as far as the old man’s cutting me out of his will goes, I could beat it in law, and then have a pile big enough left to break my neck if I was to jump off the top of it. They’re not putting anything over on me, Joan. I’m sticking to this little old range because it suits me to stick. I would go tomorrow if it wasn’t for you.”
Reid added this in a low voice, his words a sigh, doing it well, even convincingly well.
“I’m sorry,” Joan said, moved by his apparent sincerity, “but there’s not a bit of use in your throwing away three years, or even three more months, of your life here, Earl.”
“You’ll like me better when you begin to know me, Joan. I’ve stood off because I didn’t want to interfere with your studies, but maybe now, since you’ve got a vacation, I can come over once in a while and get acquainted.”
“Earl, it wouldn’t be a bit of use.” Joan spoke earnestly, pitying him a little, now that she began to believe him.
“Why, we’re already engaged,” he said; “they’ve disposed of us like they do princes and princesses.”
“I don’t know how they marry them off, but if that’s the way, it won’t work on the sheep range,” said Joan.
“We’ve been engaged, officially, ever since I struck the range, and I’ve never once, never even––” He hesitated, constrained by bashfulness, it seemed, from his manner of bending his head and plucking at her horse’s mane.