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254 be lousy if you can help it, honey.” She considered lice in the same class with smutty jokes,—things to be whispered about.

After breakfast Mr. Wheeler took Claude out to the fields, where Ralph was directing the harvesters. They watched the binder for a while, then went over to look at the haystacks and alfalfa, and walked along the edge of the cornfield, where they examined the young ears. Mr. Wheeler explained and exhibited the farm to Claude as if he were a stranger; the boy had a curious feeling of being now formally introduced to these acres on which he had worked every summer since he was big enough to carry water to the harvesters. His father told him how much land they owned, and how much it was worth, and that it was unencumbered except for a trifling mortgage he had given on one quarter when he took over the Colorado ranch.

“When you come back,” he said, “you and Ralph won’t have to hunt around to get into business. You’ll both be well fixed. Now you’d better go home by old man Dawson’s and drop in to see Susie. Everybody about here was astonished when Leonard went.” He walked with Claude to the corner where the Dawson land met his own. “By the way,” he said as he turned back, “don’t forget to go in to see the Yoeders sometime. Gus is pretty sore since they had him up in court. Ask for the old grandmother. You remember she never learned any English. And now they’ve told her it’s dangerous to talk German, she don’t talk at all and hides away from everybody. If I go by early in the morning, when she’s out weeding the garden, she runs and squats down in the gooseberry bushes till I’m out of sight.”

Claude decided he would go to the Yoeders’ today, and to the Dawsons’ tomorrow. He didn’t like to think there might