Jessie smiled up at her gratefully. Mrs. Horton might not, perhaps, have great influence in educational circles, but the highest authority among them could not have had a kinder heart. But something that Mrs. Horton had said set me thinking of quite another matter. "If you were here so long ago," I observed, suspending my task of shelling peas, and looking earnestly at our visitor, "why didn't Mr. Horton take up some land? He could have taken anything, almost then, and I--we--I have sometimes thought that he kind of wanted this place," I concluded, weakly. Mrs. Horton's gentle face flushed; she was really fond of her husband, who, to be sure, was very careful not to let any knowledge of his underhanded doings come to her ears. "To tell the truth, Leslie," she said, "I've thought now and again myself that Jake was looking after this place. It's a beautiful place; there isn't another as pretty in the valley, but when we first came here folks were not thinking of taking up land--no, indeed. Cattle ranges were what they were after, and they couldn't abide the settler that put up fences. No; Jake let his chance of taking the place slip, and your father took it up; and that was right; he wasn't a cattleman, and he needed the land to work. Don't you fret about Jake's wanting it. He don't need it, for one thing, for we're real well to do, if I do say it, and it would be a pretty unneighborly thing for him to grudge the place to you now. You see, Jake's ways are different. He makes folks think, often, I make no doubt, that he's set on getting things when he isn't, really. I expect he'd feel quite hurt if you were to lose this place." "Unless he got it himself," was my silent amendment. "We could buy the ranch where we are," Mrs. Horton went on, "and I wish Jake was willing to do it; I'm like your father was; I want a home of my own, but Jake says he doesn't like that place as well as he does another that he has in mind." "What place is that?" asked Jessie. "I don't know, really, Jake's no hand to talk over business matters with me; no hand at all, and so I don't worry him. I just let him take his own gait." And a very bad gait it was, if she had but known it, poor woman! No more was said about the land, the remainder of the day passed pleasantly, and it was nearly night-fall when Mrs. Horton again climbed into the wagon-seat and headed the horses toward home. Good-bys had been exchanged when, suddenly, she drew in the restless horses to say: "You tell old Joe, when he comes back, how that fire got started; tell him that he must be more careful, these dry times, how he lets such a lot of dry stuff get lodged against the house." And, with that admonition, she was gone. CHAPTER VIII "BEST LAID PLANS"