"Oh!" said Taylor, and sat looking into the fire.
A few minutes before seven they all came back into the sitting room. The men wore black coats, by way of compromise, and Mrs. Kirby and the children were in white.
"Like as not she does up them boiled shirts and dresses herself, don't you think?" was the minister's awed comment to Cairness, as they went to bed that night in the bare little room.
"Like as not," Cairness agreed.
"She's mighty nice looking, ain't she?"
Cairness said "yes" rather half heartedly. That fresh, sweet type was insipid to him now, when there was still so fresh in his memory the beauty of a black-haired girl, with eagle eyes that did not flinch before the sun's rays at evening or at dawn.
"I'll bet the help don't like the seven o'clock dinner."
Cairness suggested that they were given their supper at six.
"I know that. But they don't like it, all the same. And I'll bet them cutaways riles them, too."
Cairness himself had speculated upon that subject a good deal, and had noticed with a slight uneasiness the ugly looks of some of the ranch hands. "They are more likely to have trouble in that quarter than with the Indians," he said to himself. For he had seen much, in the ranks, of the ways of the disgruntled, free-born American.