"Have you heard the news? It's this: You know Nancy Lewis, the dish-washer in the restaurant before the Boom, the girl who happened to save her earnings and buy a bit of land that turned into a gold nugget? Well, a millionaire who made his money here, fell in love with her. She accepted him, but he made a slight mistake. He failed to keep an engagement with her one night and sent a waiter with a note. She got huffy and went off and married the waiter. "We can't rise all at once from our station in life, can we? Like as not, when we get into our new house and put on style ourselves with our drags and our dogs, I'll be sortin' out letters in my dreams and handin' them through a dream window to the people. This girl is a born dish-washer. She clung to her station. Her children may rise from the position of dish-washers, if they have enough money and education, but not she." "Wait a minute. Here's a postcard I haven't read yet. It looks like it's been through a cyclone. Land sakes alive! Guess who it's from!" "Can't," said the Professor, beginning to be hungry. The Post Mistress turned the card over and over. "It's from Jonathan, Cyclona's father," she chuckled. "Of all the people in the world! It is post-marked Texas." "So that's where they blew to! It's to Cyclona, but everybody will be dying to know what it says. Listen: "'Dear Cyclona:-- "'I think you will be glad to hear that this cyclone was good to us, blowin' us 'way down here in Texas, where the weather is so fine. It saved me the trouble, too, of bothering with the roof. It blew it right side up and the clothes are all down in the room now.'" "'Your affectionate father,'" "'Jonathan.'" "'P.S.--I like this part of the country better than I did Kansas. I think we will stay here, Cyclona.'" "Until another cyclone comes along," the Professor commented, "and blows him into the Gulf." "I wonder," mused the Post Mistress, "if the cyclone put the clothes away in the presses when it took them down from the walls." CHAPTER XXVIII. [Illustration] It was as the Post Mistress had said. Cyclona was the heiress of the Magic City. As Seth had predicted, she sold his land in its heart for more money than she knew what to do with. Cyclona was not only the most beautiful young woman in the Magic City, but she was the most beautifully gowned and exquisite, what with her well-filled purse with its attendant luxuries of maids, mantua-makers and milliners. She was new to look at, but old thoughts clung to her, old dreams, old fancies. Cyclona dreamed a dream one night. She thought that she was in the old dugout at the little deal table before the dim half-window, outside which the wind sang fitfully, blowing the tumbleweeds hither and thither, near and far, with moans and sighs, and Seth sat by her side. And as of old he talked to her of the beautiful house.