and spoke downward at the top of her cropped head, she snuggling her face against his wool-clad breast.

“Baby,” he said, “when all’s said and done, the whole thing’s up to you, way I look at it. I don’t suppose there ever was a man who really loved his daughter but what he figured that, taking one thing with another, she was too good for any man on earth. I’m not saying now what sort of a husband I’d try to pick out for you if the choice had been left to me. I’d probably want to keep you an old maid so’s I could have you around and then I’d secretly despise myself for doing it, too. What I’m saying is this: If you’re certain you know your own mind and if you’ve decided that this boy is the boy you want, why what more is there for me to do except maybe to ask you just one or two small questions?”

“Shoot!” she bade, without looking up, but her arms hugged him a little tighter. “Probably one of the nicest old meal-tickets in the world,” she added, confidentially addressing the top buttonhole of his sweater.

“Has it by any chance entered into your calculations at this early stage of the game, how you are going to live—you two? Or where? Or, if I may be so bold, what on?”

“That’s easy,” she said, and now she was peering up at him through a tousled short forelock. “You’re going to set us up on a place out here somewhere—a ranch. We’re going to raise beef. He knows about beef. And I’m going to learn. I aim to be the leading lady beefer of the Imperial Northwest.”

“Whose notion was that?” His voice had sharpened the least bit.

“Mine, of course. He doesn’t know anything about it. His idea is that we start in on what he can earn. But my idea is that we start in on a few of the simoleons that have already been earned—by you. And that’s the idea that’s going to prevail.”

“Lucky I brought a fountain pen and a check-book along,” he said. “Nothing like being prepared for these sudden emergencies. Still, I take it there’s no great rush. Now, I tell you what: You run along and locate your mother and get that over with. She knows how I stand—we’ve been discussing this little affair our own selves.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, you have?” She seemed disappointed somehow—disappointed and slightly puzzled.

“Oh yes, several times. And on your way kindly whisper to the young man that I’m lurking right here behind these rocks ready to have a few words with him.”

 Prev. P 12/18 next