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 declared. "Aunt Lila must be right, you're a born sheepman."

"Thanks. What's on your mind, Miss Stone?"

He knew well enough it was not the lambs. No sheepman would be that much concerned over a few motherless lambs.

"That pop-eyed Peck wanted to kiss me—he tried to kiss me!"

She was hot enough to fry pancakes, her face as red as if Peck's horny stubble of beard had come too close for comfort. She looked toward the house, fearful that the mail-order suitor might be following her in pursuit of his amorous design, drawing the back of her hand spitefully across her cheek as if brushing away a pestiferous insect.

"Yes, and he did," Rawlins said, laughing unsympathetically.

"He did not!" she denied with high indignation. "He kissed Aunt Lila—he's made a big hit with her already. Darned fool! he thinks I'm going to marry him! He told Aunt Lila I sent for him."

"Didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. I never as much as hinted I wanted him to come. Oh, Mr. Rawlins!" appealingly, her hands extended in earnest supplication—"can't you have a little sympathy for me? Don't you see I'm in a devil of a fix?"

"You certainly are—if you really don't want that chap around."

"He writes a whole lot better than he talks, or looks," she pleaded her excuse for the affair, "and the picture he sent me didn't show all of him."