"Don't cry!" Harry begged, with her own eyes full of tears. "Isita's going to get well. Don't you worry." The burden of her own inability to help lay sore on Harry's heart as she rode home. Poverty and sickness and the shadow of famine beyond! She would save Isita, anyhow! Whatever happened, while she herself had bread, the other girl should have half of it. To her relief the doctor's automobile passed just after she had turned in at the home gate. Knowing that her friend was in his care she could take up her housework and the chores with real interest. Not until the cows began coming in to be milked did she remember the white-face steer. "What a stupid I am!" she said to herself with sinking heart. "How can I tell Rob and what will he think--that I'm no good, I guess. I can't leave the milking and go, and afterwards it'll be too late. I'll go the first thing in the morning." But she rode nearly all the next day without getting a glimpse of the steers. Nor, when she stopped to inquire for Isita, could Mrs. Biane give her any information about them. No strange animals had come in with theirs at milking time. CHAPTER XIX On Saturday Rob returned from haying. Because of the shortage of water for irrigating, Robinson's hundred acres had cut very much less than usual. Every one, Rob said, was complaining of the way in which the stockmen from outside had "hogged" the grazing. "So far," Rob told Harry, "every one I've talked with is willing to sign for the herd law. It's too late to do us any good this season, but we'll have it ready by the time the beef barons start coming north next spring. Biane is the only man down this way I haven't talked to. When you go up there with these oranges, I wish you'd find out if he's going to be home this evening and I'll go up then." Immediately after dinner Harry set out with the oranges. She walked, because Rob's saddle horse had a sore foot and he wanted to use Hike. So far Harry had not missed a day in going to see Isita. The fever had broken, leaving the girl weak and wasted, and now especially was the time when she needed the nourishing and dainty food that Harry took to her. The exhausting languor that follows the spotted fever made it a painful effort for Isita to move. Yet at sight of Harry in the doorway with her basket on her arm, the girl tried to raise herself on her elbow. "None of that, Miss," Harry warned her, pretending to look stern, "or I'll go straight back home, and you'll never know whether I had soup or a sermon in this basket." "It's all one to me," Isita answered, with a faint laugh. "I like whatever you bring; just so's _you_ bring it." Harry's daily visits had been literally a life-giving happiness to the poor child. Even Mrs. Biane's strange bitterness had softened before Harry's irrepressibly sunny nature. To-day she came in from the kitchen to set a chair beside the bed.