“It was too bad,” she said as she came to a panting stand beside him, her alder switch still in her hand, “but I couldn’t let her eat those lettuces. We’ve had a lot of trouble with them and when they’re good we can sell them as far as Sonora.” She said this with an air of pride, as one who vaunts an admired accomplishment. “Do you like gardening?” he asked, and then stopped. From the house came a sudden sound of coughing, a heavy, racking paroxysm. The girl’s eyes slanted sidewise as she stood motionless, listening. She remained thus, in a trance-like quietude of attention till the sound grew fitful and then ceased. “How did mother strike you?” she asked in a low voice. “I--she--” he blundered, and then said desperately: “Well, she’s changed, of course, but after a long period of illness--” He stopped. Unfinished sentences save more occasions than the world wots of. “Yes, of course,” she said eagerly, seizing on even such feeble encouragement. “And she’s been sick for such a dreadfully long time, ever since Virginia, more than four years now. She’s thin, though, isn’t she?” She looked anxiously at him. “Long illnesses are apt to make people thin,” he said, turning away his head. “Yes, I suppose so, especially--” She too left her sentence unfinished. For a moment she stood looking down, flicking at an adjacent rose-tree with her switch. “Tell me about the gardening,” he said, seizing on the subject as the one uppermost in his mind. “How do you get your things as far afield as Sonora?” “I’ll tell you about that later;” she suddenly seemed to shake off her anxieties as a child might. Her clouded face turned on him sparkling with new animation, “I’ll tell you all about that another time. Now--” He interrupted her: “But there may not be another time. You know I’ll be leaving soon.” She looked amazed, quite aghast. “Leaving?” she exclaimed--“leaving Foleys?” “Yes, I must be back in San Francisco in a few days. And it takes a day to ride from here to Sacramento.” “But--” she stopped, looking thoroughly dashed. The Colonel wondered what was in her mind. “But not to-morrow?” she asked, drawing near to him and speaking urgently, “you’ll be here to-morrow?” “Yes, I’ll be here to-morrow. My horse won’t be able to take the ride till the day after. He’s gone tender on his forefoot.” She was silent, looking down on the path and absently trailing the leaf-decked tip of her switch in the dust. He regarded her with tender amusement. “You haven’t seen the spring yet,” she said abruptly without raising her eyes. The remark was startling. It was the discovery of this spring which had led to the unpleasantness with the squatter. The Colonel would probably have gone on paying the taxes and letting the squatter live on his premises till the end of things, if the spring had not waked him to the possibilities of ownership. He colored a little. For the first time it seemed to him the young girl had shown bad taste.