"Rather clever, Frank, but that isn't just what I mean. I mean like Spoof; we might as well be frank about it. I've seen him watch the sunset in the pond; watch the colors change and blend and run in little ripples with a touch of breeze as though the water had been stirred with a feather; I've seen him sit for hours watching the ambers and saffrons and champagnes of the prairie sunset, and----" "And that's why he got so little plowing done." "Stop it! And he knows every flower on the prairies, and all you know is pigweed and----" "And tiger lilies." "Stop it again! And he takes note of little things, like when I worked a new strip of lace into the yoke of my dress, and when I put a dash of scarlet ribbon in my hat he said it gave me just the touch of color that one needed on the prairies, and it was no wonder that the Red Indians loved color, and how much wiser, in some things, they were than we, and----" "He was spoofing you, Jean." "He wasn't." "Then he was making love to you." "Perhaps. But it was very nice. You never noticed my lace or my ribbon. You didn't even notice this new cap I have on to-day; I made it out of an old muff, all myself, and I just said to myself, 'I wonder if Frank will notice it,' but you didn't----" "I did, too. I saw it first thing, and I thought how nice it looked on you." "Spoof would have said how nice I looked under it." "Oh, damn Spoof!" "Spoof's an artist, Frank. You're not." "Nor yet a poet. But I reckon I'll make a good farmer." "We threshed out the ox question a while ago. Let's keep on new ground." "Very well. Here's some new ground. When did Spoof tell you all these things? I understood he hadn't come into the house all the time we were away." "He didn't either--hardly. But he used to come over regularly to see that everything was all right about the place and to have his 'bawth', and he had the handsomest bathing suit--white and yellow trimmings--and Marjorie and I fixed up bathing suits too, and we used to go in----" "Together?" "Of course. Only Marjorie only went in once or twice; she said she was afraid of the frogs. . . . . Marjorie is a knowing girl." "My own sister! And she would conspire . . . . . ." I crunched a clump of crust viciously under my heel. "Well, seeing that you have confessed, I suppose I should own up, too," I said, after a silence. "I never told you that there was a girl out where I worked this summer." "No? What was she like?" Jean's voice was steady, but I caught a new note in it. It augured well for my first attempt at romancing. "Oh, she was a nice girl, all right. Her folks thought she would make a good ox, but she didn't quite fall in line. She had that broader vision you set so much on. Sort o' hinted that she and I might do well running a rooming house at Moose Jaw; they say things are humming at the Jaw. Rather suggested----" "Oh, Frank, she never did! . . . . . Wanted you to marry her, I suppose?"