Frank maliciously grinned. “Oh, we’ll treat him right. We won’t do a thing to him!”
“Now, Frank,” she warned, “if you try any of your tricks on him you’ll hear from me.”
“Why all this worry on your part?” he asked, keenly. “How long since you found him?”
“We rode up on the stage day before yesterday, and he seemed so kind o’ blue and lonesome I couldn’t help trying to chirk him up.”
“How will Cliff take all this chirking business?”
“Cliff ain’t my guardian—yet,” she laughingly responded. “Mr. Norcross is a college man, and not used to our ways—”
“Mister Norcross—what’s his front name?”
“Wayland.”
He snorted. “Wayland! If he gets past us without being called ‘pasty’ he’s in luck. He’s a ‘lunger’ if there ever was one.”
The girl was shrewd enough to see that the more she sought to soften the wind to her Eastern tenderfoot the more surely he was to be shorn, so she gave over her effort in that direction, and turned to the old folks. To Mrs. Meeker she privately said: “Mr. Norcross ain’t used to rough ways, and he’s not very rugged, you ought ’o kind o’ favor him for a while.”