"Hump-mmh, hump-mmh!" He looked at her from under his slanted lids and shook his head, while his big face quivered with amusement. "You haven't given up all your riotous tricks even yet--don't tell me." He spoke with the indulgence that had allowed free rein to her caprices all her life. "Never you mind, I do precious little that is riotous any more; I am getting used to harness," she made answer, and looked as though she did not mean to be interfered with in the precious little that was riotous that she still clung to, and then looked as though she were threatening herself with sweeping reform. "Go back to sleep, Daddy. You will be in my way presently, anyhow." "Anybody coming?" "Your Mr. Steering." "'My!'" Madeira's face clouded over, and he thrust out his jaw grimacingly. "If he _were_ mine, you know what I should do with him?" he asked, in a sharp voice. "No, I don't know. What would you do with him?" "I should send him packing back East. This country don't need,--aw, the people of this country are good enough for the country and the country is good enough for them. We don't need outsiders." He was so vehement that she regarded him questioningly. "Don't you like him any more?" she inquired, with a little dubious shake of her head. "I don't like"--Madeira got up and walked back and forth under the crab-apple tree--"I don't like for a man without any practical knowledge or experience to get a lot of ideas about a thing and bring them to a field and try to push other chaps out, other chaps who are already in the field." "Yes, but----" It occurred to her that she was defending Steering--"but if he brings the ideas, he ought to have the credit for originating the ideas, oughtn't he?" "No! No!" Madeira's voice rang up, urgent, strident; he did not seem conscious that he was talking to her; he seemed rather to be having something out with himself. The strain of the past weeks had come back to his face. "Plenty of people before this Steering have thought of ore in the Canaan Tigmores. Look at old Grierson himself! Originate the idea! Grierson had the idea before Steering was born! We can get ideas in this country, and work 'em out, too, without any help from outsiders." "Mr. Steering is not exactly an outsider, is he?" "Yes, he is, too. He hasn't any more claim to this land now than you have; it isn't any more his business what's done here during Grierson's lifetime than it's Rockefeller's business. Not a bit. Let Steering wait till the land is his." "Well,"--she was troubled,--"in the meantime, what is old Grierson going to do?"