Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/49

 "There never was any romance in this life on the range—it's been highly misrepresented to you. Mr. Barrett," she said.

"What a sour old materialist!" Mrs. Nearing laughed.

"Aunt Hope, I was born here, I ought to know if anybody does. There isn't a bit of romance in cowpunching, Mr. Barrett. You'll find that out the first time it rains your boots full this fall."

"Oh, you weren't born so very long ago, Alma," Mrs. Nearing said, in gentle disputation; "maybe you chanced to arrive after the age of romance, granting there isn't any left for poor Edgar, You haven't seen it all, child, very little of it, in fact, since you were old enough to give romance a thought. She's been away at school the past six years, most of that time, anyway, Ed. Don't shatter his dream before he's had a chance to see for himself, prophet of sorrow."

"Not for half the world," Alma declared, laughing lightly, looking so charming in the soft lamplight that Barrett felt himself to be on the very borderland of romance that hour.

"If I could people the range with wild cowboys, shooting, rollicking; riding incredible distances on errands of gallantry and mercy, I'd put them there for him, every one that ever had 'loped through the pages of romance. But Mr. Barrett will find cowboys to be of quite a different stripe—you know it, Aunt Hope, as well as anybody."

"You've eaten rue out of my garden, young lady," Aunt Hope charged, lifting a solemn finger.