For a time he lay silent, watching the pencil travel the width of the page--and then back. A mass of completed manuscript lay at her side, the pages covered with carefully written, legible words. She had always taken a pardonable pride in her penmanship. For a while he watched her, puzzled, furtively trying to decipher some of the words that appeared upon the pages. But the distance was too great for him and he finally gave it up and fell to looking at her instead, though determined to solve the wordy mystery that was massed near her. Finally finding the silence irksome, he dropped an experimental word, speaking casually. "You must have been to school a heap--writin' like you do." She gave him no answer, being at that moment absorbed in a thought which she was trying to transcribe before it should take wings and be gone forever. "Writin' comes easy to some people," he persisted. The thought had been set down; she turned very slightly. "Yes," she said looking steadily at him, "it does. So does impertinence." He smiled easily. "I ain't aimin' to be impertinent," he returned. "I wouldn't reckon that askin' you what you are writin' would be impertinent. It's too long for a letter." "It is a novel," she returned shortly. He smiled, exulting over this partial concession. "I reckon to write a book you must be some special kind of a woman," he observed admiringly. She was silent. He sat up and leaned toward her, his eyes flashing with a sudden passion. "If that's it," he said with unmistakable significance, "I don't mind tellin' you that I'm some partial to them special kind." Her chin rose a little. "I am not concerned over your feelings," she returned without looking at him. "That kind of a woman would naturally know a heap," he went on, apparently unmindful of the rebuke; "they'd cert'nly know enough to be able to see when a man likes them." She evidently understood the drift, for her eyes glowed subtly. "It is too bad that you are not a 'special kind of man,' then," she replied. "Meanin'?" he questioned, his eyes glinting with eagerness. "Meaning that if you were a 'special kind of man' you would be able to tell when a woman doesn't like you," she said coldly. "I reckon that I ain't a special kind then," he declared, his face reddening slightly. "Of course, I've seen that you ain't appeared to take much of a shine to me. But I've heard that there's women that can be won if a man keeps at it long enough." "Some men like to waste their time," she returned quietly. "I don't call it wastin' time to be talkin' to you," he declared rapidly. "Our opinions differ," she observed shortly, resting the pencil point on the page that she had been writing.