"I don't like Mr. Gledware's eye because it always looks away from you. He would be considered a handsome man by anybody not particular about eyes. Afterward, I heard about his trip to Texas. Annabel and her mother were talking about Mr. Gledware's past. It seems that once Mr. Gledware and his first wife (I say his FIRST because I look upon Annabel as certain to be the second) joined the Oklahoma boomers and they were attacked by Indians, just as MY father and mother were, and they had with them his wife's little girl, for he had married a widow, just as MY father had (my stepfather) and there was a terrible battle. And Mr. Gledware, oh, he was SO brave! He killed ten Indians after the rest of his party, including his wife and daughter, had been slain, and he broke through the attacking party and escaped on a horse--the only one that got away. "He doesn't look THAT brave. Later, I asked him if it could be possible that he was with the wagon-train we were in, but he said there wasn't any Mr. or Mrs. Willock in his party, and no little girl named Lahoma Willock. But he's been through what my father went through, and it made me feel kinder to him, somehow. "But his eye is bad. Maybe it got in the habit of shifting about looking for Indians in the sagebrush. Sometimes he seems still to be looking for Indians. Well, I see where's he's right there, and I'm going to tell you why, which brings me to the biggest news yet. "Now I've come to the day when I sent you the telegram, and why I sent it, so be prepared! There was to be a big picnic, today, near a town called Independence, and, as it happened, I didn't feel like going, so begged off--let me tell you why: I began a novel, last night, full of bright conversation, the pages all broken up in little scraps of print that hurry you along as if building steps for you to run down--it was ever and ever more interesting than real people can be. It was a story about a house-party and the writer just made them talk to suit himself and not to suit their dulness as a real house-party must, you know. So I stayed to finish that book. Oh, of course if I had had a lover to be with! But that's something I'll never have, I suppose; but I don't complain, Brick, for you've given me everything else I ever wanted. "The reason I would like to have a lover is as follows: So I would understand the experience of being regarded that way. It would be like plowing up the sage-brush to plant kafir-corn and millo-maize, because until such time, there is bound to be a part of my nature unworked.