“I’ll have to choose another subject then. What did you do about that bunch of Circle 66 cows you looked at on your way in?” They discussed business for a few minutes, after which she went back to her patient and he to his work. “Ain’t she a straight-up little gentleman for fair?” the foreman asked himself in rhetorical and exuberant question, slapping his hat against his leg as he strode toward the corral. “Think of her coming at me like she did, the blamed little thoroughbred. Y’u bet she knows me down to the ground and how sudden I got over any fool notions I might a-started to get in my cocoanut. But the way she came back at me, quick as lightning and then some, pretendin’ all that foolishness and knowin’ all the time I’d savez the game.” Both McWilliams and his mistress had guessed right in their surmise as to Nora Darling’s popularity in the cow country. She made an immediate and pronounced hit. It was astonishing how many errands the men found to take them to “the house,” as they called the building where the mistress of the ranch dwelt. Bannister served for a time as an excellent excuse. Judging from the number of the inquiries which the men found it necessary to make as to his progress, Helen would have guessed him exceedingly popular with her riders. Having a sense of humor, she mentioned this to McWilliams one day. He laughed, and tried to turn it into a compliment to his mistress. But she would have none of it. “I know better, sir. They don’t come here to see me. Nora is the attraction, and I have sense enough to know it. My nose is quite out of joint,” she laughed. Mac looked with gay earnestness at the feature she had mentioned. “There’s a heap of difference in noses,” he murmured, apparently apropos of nothing. “That’s another way of telling me that Nora’s pug is the sweetest thing you ever saw,” she charged. “I ain’t half such a bad actor as some of the boys,” he deprecated. “Meaning in what way?” “The Nora Darling way.” He pronounced her name so much as if it were a caress that his mistress laughed, and he joined in it. “It’s your fickleness that is breaking my heart, though I knew I was lost as soon as I saw your beatific look on the day you got back with Nora. The first week I came none of you could do enough for me. Now it’s all Nora, darling.” She mimicked gayly his intonation. “Well, ma’am, it’s this way,” explained the foreman with a grin. “Y’u’re right pleasant and friendly, but the boys have got a savvy way down deep that y’u’d shuck that friendliness awful sudden if any of them dropped around with ‘Object, Matrimony’ in their manner. Consequence is, they’re loaded down to the ground with admiration of their boss, but they ain’t presumptuous enough to expaict any more. I had notions, mebbe, I’d cut more ice, me being not afflicted with bashfulness. My notions faded, ma’am, in about a week.” “Then Nora came?” she laughed.