Daddy John welcomed her by pushing up against the roof prop and giving her two thirds of the driver's seat. With her hands clipped between her knees she eyed him sideways. "What do you think's going to happen?" she said, trying to compose her spirits by teasing him. "It's going to rain," he answered. This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate, it was not emotional. "Now, Daddy John, don't be silly. Would I get off my horse and climb up beside you to ask you about the weather?" "I don't know what you'd do, Missy, you've got that wild out here on the plains--just like a little buffalo calf." He glimpsed obliquely at her, his old face full of whimsical tenderness. She smiled bravely and he saw above the smile, her eyes, untouched by it. He instantly became grave. "Well, what's goin' to happen?" he asked soberly. "I'm going to be married." He raised his eyebrows and gave a whistle. "That is somethin'! And which is it?" "What a question! David, of course. Who else could it be?" "Well, he's the best," he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. "He's a first-rate boy as far as he goes." "I don't think that's a very nice way to speak of him. Can't you say something better?" The old man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inward cogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised at something in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides. "He's a good boy," he said thoughtfully. "No one can say he ain't. But some way or other, I'd rather have had a bigger man for you, Missy." "Bigger!" she exclaimed indignantly. "He's nearly six feet. And girls don't pick out their husbands because of their height." "I ain't meant it that way. Bigger in what's in him--can get hold o' more, got a bigger reach." "I don't know what you mean. If you're trying to say he's not got a big mind you're all wrong. He knows more than anybody I ever met except father. He's read hundreds and hundreds of books." "That's it--too many books. Books is good enough but they ain't the right sort 'er meat for a feller that's got to hit out for himself in a new country. They're all right in the city where you got the butcher and the police and a kerosene lamp to read 'em by. David 'ud be a fine boy in the town just as his books is suitable in the town. But this ain't the town. And the men that are the right kind out here ain't particularly set on books. I'd 'a' chose a harder feller for you, Missy, that could have stood up to anything and didn't have no soft feelings to hamper him." "Rubbish," she snapped. "Why don't you encourage me?" Her tone drew his eyes, sharp as a squirrel's and charged with quick concern. Her face was partly turned away. The curve of her cheek was devoid of its usual dusky color, her fingers played on her under lip as if it were a little flute.