"Mrs. Eldredge!" Harry thought instantly. "But why haven't they let us know they were here?" The smile of expectancy was on her face as she got down from her saddle and knocked at the door. The smile stiffened with surprise as the door opened narrowly and Joe Biane looked out at her. "Why, Joe! How--I thought--Don't the Eldredges live here?" "Never heard of 'em." Joe was older, heavier, as lounging and covertly impertinent as ever. "Why, they are the people who filed on this land, built this house." "Never been here, anyhow." "How long have you been here, if I may ask? Is Isita here?" involuntarily, she glanced behind him into the house. "She ain't in now," Joe slowly began to close the door. "Her'n the old lady's went off hunting greens." "I see." Harry thought of the woman gathering wood. "Well, I wish you'd tell Isita to come over and see me." "Sure." There was an odd gleam in Joe's eye as he closed the door. "I wonder what it is that makes them so unfriendly," Harry thought as she rode home. "But if they think I'm going to give up Isita just for the snubs of a surly creature like Joe they're mistaken." CHAPTER XII That more than Joe's surliness stood between Isita and Harry, the latter was not long in discovering. She was not easily discouraged from attempting anything she had set her heart on, and at first she made all sorts of pretexts for going up to the Biane's. Sometimes it was to carry eggs or new pieplant or lettuce; "We have so much," she explained to the silent, haggard-faced woman who came to the door; or it was a bundle of illustrated papers that had been sent her from home, and she thought Isita might be interested in them. Once or twice she asked boldly if Isita might not come down and stay with her for a few days to help with the chores, while she was working outside with Rob. But Biane himself made it plain that Isita was expected to work for her own family, and Mrs. Biane avoided seeing or talking to their neighbor. To be sure, Isita came down to the Holliday's, but it was to "borrow" soap, salt, tools and various other small necessities of which the shiftless Biane family stood in need, and she was always in a nervous hurry to get back home and never accepted Harry's friendliest urging to stay awhile. Harry felt sure that the younger girl wanted to be friends, that in this lonely land of vast distances each of them needed the other. But she saw that Isita was very much afraid of her quiet, smiling tyrannical father and, in spite of her unmistakable attachment to Harry, she was too shy to talk of home troubles.