Leigh turned to see Thaine Aydelot looking down at her as he leaned over the high back of the rustic seat. He was in his working clothes with his straw hat set back, showing his brown face. His luminous dark eyes were shining and a half-teasing, half-sympathetic smile was on his lips. But whatever the clothes, there was always something of the Southern gentleman about every man of the Thaine blood. Something of the soldierly bearing of his father had been his heritage likewise. "May I see your stuff, or is it not for the profane eyes of a thresher of alfalfa to look upon?" Leigh drew back and held up her drawing-board. "It's just like you, Leigh. You always were an artist, but when did you learn all the technique? Is that what you call it? How do you do it?" "I don't know," Leigh answered frankly. "It seems to do itself." "And why do you do it? Or why don't you do more of it?" Thaine asked. The girl answered, smiling: "Just between us two, I hope to do a piece good enough to sell and help to lift the price of alfalfa seed a bit." "By the way, I brought the first load of seed over just now. Where's Uncle Jim?" Thaine asked, trying not to let the pity in his heart show itself in his eyes. "Uncle Jim is breaking sod--weeds, I mean--for fall sowing. Wait a minute and I'll get you the money he left for you." Thaine threw himself down in the shade beside Leigh's seat while she went into the house. "I wish I didn't have to take that money, but I know better than to say a word," he said to himself. "Thank the Lord, the worried look is beginning to leave Uncle Jim's face, though. How could any of us get along without Uncle Jim?" "What little seed to be worth so much, but it's the beginning of conquest," Leigh said as Thaine took the bills from her hand. "And it's a much more hopeful business to reclaim from booms and weeds than from this lonely old prairie as it was when Uncle Jim and your father first came here." "It's just the same old pioneer spirit, though, and you are fighting a mortgage just like they fought loneliness, and besides, Asher Aydelot had Virginia Thaine to help him to keep his courage up." A sudden flush deepened on his ruddy cheeks and he continued: "Of course you are going to the picnic? You'll have to start early. It's a goodish way to 'The Cottonwoods.' The Sunflower Ranch needs my talents, so I can't go with the crowd, but I may draggle in about high noon. I'll drive over in the buggy, and I'll try to snake some pretty girl off the wagons to ride home with me when it's all over." "Maybe the pretty girls will all be preempted before you get there," Leigh replied. "I know one that I hope won't be," Thaine said.