Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/48

 ordered words, as one grasps the great essentials of life in its quick moments without illustration or printed page.

"She's the boss of the ranch, you'll have to take orders from her, all of us do," Nearing was saying.

"That doesn't discourage me a bit," Barrett replied, and sincerely, but afraid the moment the words were out of his mouth that he might appear flippant, or, more to be dreaded, ridiculous or contemptuous in her eyes.

Mrs. Nearing and Alma sat at table with Barrett when the soft-footed Mexican woman had spread his late supper, to bear him company in their hospitable way.

"It isn't good for youth to sit alone and commune with its own soul at meal-time," Mrs. Nearing said. "I've cured more than one case of incipient dyspepsia in diplomats and young secretaries of legation by sitting them down with young ladies and flowers."

And there were flowers here, also, a bowl of roses, for that place was fruitful of the comforts and beauties of life, although eighty miles from the nearest railroad. While Barrett restored himself they talked of many things—his adventures at sea, his unaccountable freak in coming there to rough it as a cowboy after the romance of that larger, happier hfe. That, at least, was Alma's view of it.

Barrett told her of his early longing to come to the range, an ambition deferred until, as she declared the case, the romance all had been lived and nothing was left to him but the hardships and rough work.