Gertie was fast losing her timidity and had so much persistence in learning to ride that she bade fair to have a more graceful seat in the saddle than Jane herself. Sherm was deep in farm work and the girls saw little either of him or of Ernest, except in the evenings and on Sundays. Dick ran the reaper in the harvest field for Dr. Morton for three days, but his zeal waned as the weather got hotter. "This is my vacation and I don't want to sweat my sweet self entirely away 'in little drops of water.' Think how pained you'd be, dearest," he told Alice. "I never dreamed there was so much farming to a ranch," Alice remarked to Dr. Morton one day. "I thought you attended to the cattle----" "And rode around in chaps and sombreros, looking picturesque, the rest of the time," interrupted Dick. "My precious wife is disappointed because she hasn't seen any cowboys cavorting about the place shooting each other up or gambling with nice picturesque bags of gold dust." "Dick Harding! I didn't. But we'd hardly know there were any cattle round if we didn't go through the pasture occasionally." "Our big pastures take them off our hands pretty well in summer, but in winter they have to be fed and herded and looked after generally, don't they, Chicken Little? Humbug has played herd boy herself more than once. You are thinking of the big cattle ranges in Colorado and Montana and Wyoming, Alice. This country is cut up into farms and the ranges are gone. And we have to raise our corn and wheat and rye, not to mention fruits and vegetables. It's a busy life, but I love its independence." A day or two after this conversation, Ernest came in late to dinner, exclaiming: "Father, the white sow and all her thirteen pigs are out." "The Dickens, have you any idea where she's gone?" Dr. Morton looked decidedly annoyed. "I told Jim Bart that pen wasn't strong enough to hold her--she's the meanest animal on the place." "One of the harvest hands said he thought he saw her down along the slough. I am sorry for the porkers if she is--they aren't a week old yet." "Go down right after dinner and see if you can see anything of her. The old fool will lose them all in that marshy ground. And I don't see how we can spare a man to look after them. It looks like rain and that wheat must be in the barns by night." Ernest came back from his search to report that the sow and one lone pig had wandered back to the barnyard and Jim Bart had got them into the pen. "One pig! You don't mean she has lost the other twelve? That's costly business!" "Looks that way. They're such little fellows--I suppose they're squealing down there in the slough in that swamp grass--it's a regular jungle three or four feet high."