Meeker, who was as big as her husband, greeted Norcross warmly, and made a place for him beside her own chair.

“Highst along there, boys, and give the company a chance,” she commanded, sharply. “Our dinner’s turrible late to-day.”

The boys—they were in reality full-grown cubs of eighteen or twenty—did as they were bid with much noise, chaffing Berrie with blunt humor. The table was covered with a red oil-cloth, and set with heavy blue-and-white china. The forks were two-tined, steel-pronged, and not very polished, and the food was of the simplest sort; but the girl seemed at home there—as she did everywhere—and was soon deep in a discussion of the price of beef, and whether it was advisable to ship now or wait a month.

Meeker read Sutler’s letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after deliberation, remarked: “All right, we’ll do the best we can for you, Mr. Norcross; but we haven’t any fancy accommodations.”

“He don’t expect any,” replied Berrie. “What he needs is a little roughing it.”

“There’s plinty of that to be had,” said one of the herders, who sat below the salt. “’is the soft life I’m nadin’.”

“Pat’s strong on soft jobs,” said another; and Berea joined the laugh which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and it troubled Norcross a little. She had so little the sex feeling and demanded so few of the rights and privileges of a girl. The men all admired her, that was evident, almost too evident, and one or two of the older men felt the charm of her young womanhood too deeply even to meet her eyes; but of this Norcross was happily ignorant. Already in these two days he had acquired a distinct sense of proprietorship in her, a feeling which made him jealous of her good name.

Meeker, it turned out, was an Englishman by way of Canada, and this was his second American wife. His first had been a sister to Mrs. McFarlane. He was a man of much reading—of the periodical sort—and the big sitting-room was littered with magazines both English and American, and his talk abounded in radical and rather foolish utterances. Norcross considered it the most disorderly home he had ever seen, and yet it was not without a certain dignity. The rooms were large and amply provided with furniture of a very mixed and gaudy sort, and the table was spread with abundance.

One of the lads, Frank Meeker, a dark, intense youth of about twenty, was Berea’s full cousin. The others were merely hired hands, but they all eyed the new-comer with disfavor. The fact that Berrie had brought him and that she seemed interested in him added to the effect of the smart riding-suit which he wore. “I’d like to roll him in the creek,” muttered one of them to his neighbor.

This dislike Berrie perceived—in some degree—and to Frank she privately said: “Now you fellows have got to treat Mr. Norcross right. He’s been very sick.”

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.