“She belongs right here.” Phoebe's tone was a challenge, whether she meant it to be so or not. “This is going to be her home from now on; and I want you boys to treat her nicer than you've been doing. She's been here a week almost; and there ain't one of you that's made friends with her yet, or tried to, even. You've played jokes on her, and told her things to scare her--and my grief! I was hoping she'd have a softening influence on you, and make gentlemen of you. And far as I can make out, just having her on the place seems to put the Old Harry into every one of you! It isn't right. It isn't the way I expected my boys would act toward a stranger--a girl especially. And I did hope Grant would behave better.” “Sure, he ought to. Us boneheads don't know any better--but Grant's EDUCATED.” Wally grinned and winked elaborately at his mother's back. “I'm not educated up to Christmas angels that look as if they'd been stepped on,” Grant defended himself. “She's a real nice little thing. If you boys would quit teasing the life out of her, I don't doubt but what, in six months or so, you wouldn't know the girl,” Phoebe argued, with some heat. “I don't know the girl now.” Grant spoke dryly. “I don't want to. If I'd held a tomahawk in one hand and her flowing locks in the other, and was just letting a war-whoop outa me, she'd look at me--the way she did look.” He snorted in contemptuous amusement, and gave a little, writhing twist of his slim body into his trousers. “I never did like blondes,” he added, in a tone of finality, and started up the steps. “You never liked anything that wore skirts,” Phoebe flung after him indignantly; and she came very close to the truth. CHAPTER IV. THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL Phoebe watched the two unhappily, sighed when they disappeared around the corner of the house, and set her bowl of butter upon the broad, flat rock which just missed being overflowed with water, and sighed again. “I'm afraid it isn't going to work,” she murmured aloud; for Phoebe, having lived much of her life in the loneliness which the West means to women, frequently talked to herself. “She's such a nice little thing--but the boys don't take to her like I thought they would. I don't see as she's having a mite of influence on their manners, unless it's to make them act worse, just to shock her. Clark USED to take off his hat when he come into the house most every time. And great grief! Now he'd wear it and his chaps and spurs to the table, if I didn't make him take them off. She's nice--she's most too nice. I've got to give that girl a good talking to.” She mounted the steps to the back porch, tried the kitchen door, and found it locked. She went around to the door on the west side, opposite the gate, found that also secured upon the inside, and passed grimly to the next.