The Little Lady of the Big House

d, stamping with jingling spurs through t

a knob, a huge panel of wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick shared the secret

" he called and stamped down

seat divan in what she called her Juliet Tower, and thrilled at sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, lacy woman's things that he knew she had spread out for her own sensuous delight of contemplation. He fetched up for a moment a

leeping porch; and found only a demure, brow-troubled Chinese wom

n her, as a child almost, for Paula's service, from a fishing village on the Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as much as four dollars in a prosperous year at making nets for the fishermen. Oh Dear's first service for

mistress, Oh De

away in an agon

wai

't know," Oh Dear stammered; and Dick,

amped out under the porte cochère just as a ranch

ght summer suit responded from the car; and the next

d baggage, and Dick accompanied hi

are wonders; but we allow ourselves all sorts of loosenesses. If you'd arrived two minutes later there'd have been

both were equally gray of eye, equally clear in the whites of the eyes, and equally and precisely similarly bronzed by sun and weather-beat. Graham's features were in a slightly larger mold; his eyes were a trifle longer,

he cheeks of both were high-boned, although the hollows under Forrest's cheek-bones were more pronounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and sensitive. And both mouths, while generously proportioned,

In this particular of build, each served well as a foil to the other. Graham was all light and delight, with a hint--but the slightest of hint

, but in that glance, without pause or fumble of focus

of bulls, three hundred of them, and I'm downright proud of them. You simply must see them. Never mind your riding

thing, o

n?--McClellan?--Mexi

's no trouble," G

nd watched the last of the herd beginning its l

d some myself with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in the Argentine. If

horthorn. Only scrubs could survive the droughts. They were strong in staying powers but light on the sc

here was a young German tackled it at the same time I did, with a tenth of my capit

for the Big House. Dick flir

oung German stuck it out. He had to. You had your father's money to fall back on, and, I imagine not onl

ke the work-day of water just twenty-four hours' long. The ponds are in series, according to the nature of the fish. But the water starts working up in the mountains. It irrigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the next few rugged miles; and at the plunge from the hi

rshipers, but you're the first real water-worshiper I've ever encountered. And you're no de

ickly the cries turned to alarm, accompanied by the sounds of a prodigious splashing and floundering as of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent his head and leaped his horse through the lilacs, Gra

, roughly corrugated, sloped out gently to solid footing. Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! O

llion, sinking, emerged again by means of the powerful beat of his legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a woman who rode him--a woman as white as the white silken slip of a bathing suit that molded to her form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As marble was her back, save that the fine delicate muscles moved and crept under the silke

mallness and daintiness of her despite her gladiatorial struggles. She reminded him of some Dresden china figure set absurdly small and light and strange

n's face; it was serious and at the same time amused, expressing the pleasure it found woven with the peril. It was a white woman's face--and modern; and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. This was not a creature and a situation one happened upon in the twent

econd later, the stallion still pawing the air with fore-hoofs the size of dinner plates, the rider still clinging to the sleek, satin-coated muscles. Graham thought, with a gasp, what might have happened ha

"Catch his foretop and get on

zontally in obedience to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped back to the shoulders. Holding with one hand to the mane, she waved a white arm in the air and flashed a smile of acknowledgment to Forrest; and, as Graham noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse beside

retaining his horizontal position once it had been attained, swam to the lo

s. But Paula, still astride, leaned forward, imperiously took the lead-part

called. "This is our hen party, an

dgment, and led the way back t

was it?" Gr

child that never grew up, the gritties

y," Graham said. "Do your peo

ountain Lad. She rode him straight down the spill-way--tobog

egs as well as her own

r him last year after he'd cleaned up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And as for Paula, she could break

tuppence for her chan

row for shelter. I really felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit a 'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that nobody knows her, and that she doesn't know herself--just the same way as you and I