Peak and Prairie | Page 7

about with a silver band.
Little Mrs. Nancy sitting upright in her chair, in her neat old black gown, holding the forgotten bonnet in her lap, watched her picturesque visitor with the greatest interest. And looking up into the delicate little old face, he noted all the sweetness and brightness which had so long been lost upon the world. To make a clean breast of it, the two fell frankly in love with each other upon the spot, and before the stranger had departed, he had persuaded her to visit his ranch with him the very next Sunday.
"But I don't know what to call you," she said, after having agreed upon this wild escapade.
"That's so," said he. "I go by the name of Wat Warren out here, but they used to call me Walter at home. I wish you would call me Walter."
"It's a pretty name," she said. "I thought some of calling my boy Walter at first."
Warren was on the point of departure, and a sudden embarrassment seemed to seize him. He had his hand in his trousers' pocket. "I 'most forgot the money for the license," he stammered, as he pulled out a couple of silver dollars.
Nobody knows what came over Mrs. Nancy, but she suddenly found she could not take the money.
"Oh, that's of no consequence," she said, quite as though she had had at her command the whole treasury surplus of a few years ago. "I should like to make David a present of the license;" and as her two visitors departed at full gallop, she sat down in a flutter of pleasurable excitement.
How surprising it all was! She looked back upon the last hour quite incredulous. She felt as though she had known this strange young man all her life. Not that he had told her much about his own concerns. On the contrary, after complimenting her on the subject of David's collar and David's bath, he had got her talking about herself; and she had told him about Willie, and about Atchison, and about her desire to go home to New England.
"My sakes!" said she to herself; "what a chatterbox I'm getting to be in my old age! What must he have thought of me?" But in her heart she knew he had not thought any harm of her confidence. There had been no mistaking the sympathy in that sunburnt face, and if there had been any doubt remaining, the hearty grip of the rough hand, which she still felt upon her palm, would have set her mind quite at rest.
But if Mrs. Nancy wondered at herself on Tuesday, she had fairly lost all track of her own identity when, on Sunday, she found herself seated beside her broad-shouldered friend in a light wagon, bowling over the prairies behind a pair of frisky four-year-olds, while David bounded beside them or scampered about in the vain pursuit of prairie-dogs.
"Do you feel afraid?" asked her host, looking protectingly down upon the tiny figure at his side.
"Not a mite," she declared. "I never was one of the scary kind."
They had left the mountains behind them and were speeding to the eastward. It seemed to her that a few hours of this rapid progress would bring them to the very shores of the Atlantic. On and on they went over the undulating yellow plains. As they neared the top of each rise of ground Mrs. Nancy's heart stood still in a strange fantastic suspense. Would there be trees over beyond, or lakes, or rivers, or perhaps a green New England meadow?
"Isn't it like sailing?" said her companion as they bowled along.
"I never went sailing," Mrs. Nancy replied. "I've only been out in a boat on the pond, and I think this is pleasanter."
They did little talking on that drive. Mrs. Nancy was too entirely absorbed in her new experience to have much to say. But when at last they reached the ranch, lying like an oasis in the vast barren, with young corn sprouting in the wide fields, and a handful of cottonwood trees clustered about the house, the tears fairly started to the little woman's eyes, so much did this bit of rural landscape remind her of her own far-away New England. And when the master of the house led the way into a neat little room, with a south window looking across the plains, it came his turn for confidences.
"This room was built on for my mother," he said.
"Did she live here with you?"
"No; she died before she could get here."
"Oh dear!" said his little visitor.
The two small words were eloquent with sympathy.
That was a red-letter day for Mrs. Nancy Tarbell. She felt as though she were getting a glimpse of the great West for the first time in all these years. When her host casually informed