"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; "talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to 'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. You're just an honest farm boy--why don't you be one? Get out and do some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white hands on a pitchfork-handle." Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights, showed it. "I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here." He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye, stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed of himself. A young man shows shame by rudeness. "Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy called. "Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder; then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long--Kid." The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered. As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips. "I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby--bestest in the world!" Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close. Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back toward the barn. "Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good." CHAPTER XXVIII. THE COMING OF THE MOTHER. Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady Frances Ware's train.