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 "Put your saddle over there on the end of the porch in the sun," Mrs. Ellison directed, "and I'll look you up some dry clothes."

"I'll be grateful for the breakfast, madam," Simpson said, rather high-horse and formal in his manner, "but the present clothing will serve me very-very well. I'm rather used to being rained on, you know,—I'll dry out in a little while. If you don't mind, I'll stand in the sun until you're ready for me."

"It wouldn't be any trouble, and you'd be welcome," Mrs. Ellison said, regarding him with puzzled eyes. "You don't talk like a cowboy," she blurted out what was in her mind, "any more than you look like one. Why, I haven't seen a pair of shoes on a man's feet before in I don't know when."

"Perhaps it's because I'm only an occasional cowboy," Simpson replied, not very much to the point of her plain bid for information, certainly, but sufficient for the moment, it seemed to all.

"Yes, go on in and eat," Eudora said, with something nearer the warmth of genuine welcome. "I've got to go back to my bones."