"You'd better get Mr. Saxton to tell you how much fun ranching is," he said, turning to the boy, who at once became interested in Saxton. "I'm going to be a ranchman," the lad declared. "Father's going to buy me the Poindexter ranch some day." "That's one of Mr. Saxton's properties. Maybe he'd trade it to you for a tin whistle." "Is it as bad as that?" asked Saxton. "Just wait until you see it. It's pretty bad." [Pg 34] [Pg 34] "The house must have been charming," said Miss Porter. "And that's about all it was," replied her father. The dinner ended with a salad. This was not an incident but an event. The highest note of civilization is struck when a salad is dressed by a master of the chemistry of gastronomy. The clumsy and unworthy hesitate in the performance of this sacred rite, and are never sure of their proportions; the oil refuses intimacy with the vinegar, and sulks and selfishly creates little yellow isles for itself in the estranging sea of acid. The salt becomes indissoluble and the paprika is irrecoverable flotsam. The clove of garlic, always recalcitrant under clumsy handling, refuses to impart the merest hint of its wild tang, but the visible and tangible world reeks with it. It was a joy to John Saxton to see the deftness with which Evelyn Porter performed her miracle; he did not know much about girls, but he surmised that a girl who composed a salad dressing with such certainty did many things gracefully and well. There were no false starts, no "ohs" of regret and appeal, no questions of quantity. The light struck goldenly on the result as she poured it finally upon the crisply-curling lettuce leaves which showed discreetly over the edge of a deep Doulton bowl. It seemed to him high treason that his host should decline the dressing thus produced by an art which realized the dreams of alchemy, and should pour vinegar from the cruet with his own hand upon the helpless leaves. Porter demanded cigars before the others had finished, and smoked over his coffee. He was in a hurry to leave, and at the earliest possible moment led the way to[Pg 35] the veranda, picking up his hat as he stepped blithely along. [Pg 35] It was
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