Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/146

  very much—only she hoped he was not going to make love. Somehow, she did not feel in the mood for love-making just then.

"I don't know why, I'm sure. But you seem rather fond of riding about these hills by yourself. One should never ask why women do things, I fancy. It seems always to invite disaster."

"Does it?" Beatrice was not half-listening. They were passing, just then, the suburbs of a "dog town," and she was never tired of watching the prairie-dogs stand upon their burrows, chip-chip defiance until fear overtook their impertinence, and then dive headlong deep into the earth. "I do think a prairie-dog is the most impudent creature alive—and the most shrewish. I never pass but I am scolded by these little scoundrels till my ears burn. What do you think they say?"

"They're probably inviting you to stop with them and be their queen, and are scolding because your heart is hard and you only laugh and ride on."

"Queen of a prairie-dog town! Dear me! Why this plaintive mood?"

"Am I plaintive? I do not mean to be, I'm sure."

"You don't appear exactly hilarious," she told him. "I can't see what is getting the matter with 142