"Old man" Sutton, too, had many a pleasant word for both young girls; and altogether Hetty soon realized that home could be home away from her sister's house and the six plagues it held. Spring came into the land, dressing in glossier green the grayish limbs of the white-oak in the valley, opening with balmy breath the blossoms of the buckeye by the stream, and covering with gayest flowers the plain and the hillside; while in some shady nook the laurel stood, shaking its evergreen leaves in daily wonderment at the dress changes and the youthful air all nature had put on. The wild rose creeping over the veranda of the Yedral Ranch shed its perfume through the house, and cast its bright sheen upon the very roof-tree, a passion-vine, in sombre contrast, rearing its symbolic blossom cheek to cheek with the rosy flower-face of the gay child of Castile. Long since had the stage-driver left the Yedral Ranch, grateful for kind treatment received, his head and heart full of a firm conviction on two points: The first, that there was just one man good enough to be Hetty Dunlap's husband, and that that man was Frank Sutton: the second, that there was only one woman good enough to be Frank's wife, and she Hetty Dunlap. He had resumed his old post, and many a pleasant word and startling bit of news did he call out to Hetty and her friends when they were down by the "big gate," as he drove by very slowly, so as to enjoy conversation as long as possible. George was a deal pleasanter when Hetty was there by herself, or at least without Lolita; and once, when, by chance, Hetty and Frank were there alone together, he called down, regardless of the staring passengers in the coach, "That's the way I like to see things; two's good company, and three's none. Don't see what you want to be luggin' that Spanish gal round with you for, Frank; she ain't none o' your'n nohow, and never will be, nuther." Before the flush had died on her face, Hetty found her arm drawn through Frank's, and as they slowly bent their steps homeward, the mind of each seemed absorbed in the contemplation of some intricate puzzle, on the solving of which depended their whole future welfare. Then Frank raised his merry, twinkling eyes and charged her with being hopelessly enamored of George, the stage-driver, defying her to say that she had not just then been thinking of him, as he knew by her absent looks. "I--I was only looking down that way, and thinking there is no lovelier spot on earth than Yedral Ranch." She stopped abruptly; what she was saying now to cover her confusion, she had said a few days ago, from the fulness of her heart, to Lolita, strolling along this same road; and the Spanish girl had answered impulsively, "Yes; and you shall always make your home here when I--" Then she had stopped, crimson in the face, and Hetty had not urged her to finish the sentence.