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“Austin!” she burst out excitedly. “I want you to ride straight down to the stock pens,–they’ve got a thousand steers on the flats there going through from Portland, and the men say they aren’t to leave the cars to-night! I told them they would HAVE to turn them out and water them, and they just laughed! Will you go down?” She was breathing hard like an impatient child, her cheeks two poppies, her eyes blazing. “Will you? Will you?”

“Sure I will, if you’ll do something for me.” Austin pulled her toward him.

“Well, there!” She gave him a child’s impersonal kiss. “You’ll make them water them, won’t you, Austin?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll ‘tend to them.” Austin got up, his arm about her. “Look here,” said he. “How’d you like to come and live in Boston?”

Her eyes went quickly from him to his mother.

“I wouldn’t!” she said, breathing quickly and defiantly.

“Never?”

“Never, never, never! Unless it was just to visit. Why, Austin–” her reproachful eyes accused him, “you said we needn’t, ever! You KNOW I couldn’t live in a street!”

Austin laughed again. “Well, that settles Uncle William!” he announced comfortably. “I’ll write him to-morrow, mother. Come on, now, we’ll settle this other trouble!”

And he and Manzanita disappeared in the direction of the stable.

Mrs. Phelps sat thinking, deep red spots burning in her cheeks. Things could not go on this way. Yet she would not give up. She suddenly determined to try an idea of Cornelia’s.

So the word went all over the ranch-house next day that Mrs. Phelps was ill. The nature of the illness was not specified, but she could not leave her bed. Austin was all filial sympathy, Manzanita an untiring nurse. Hong Fat sent up all sorts of kitchen delicacies, the boys brought trout, and rare ferns, and wild blackberries in from their daily excursions, for her especial benefit, and before two days were over, every hour found some distant neighbor at the rancho with offers of sympathy and assistance. An old doctor came up from Emville at once, and Jose and Marty accompanied him all the twenty miles back into town for medicines.

But days went by, and the invalid was no better. She lay, quiet and uncomplaining, in the airy bedroom, while October walked over the mountain ranges, and the grapes were gathered, and the apples brought in. She took the doctor’s medicine, and his advice, and agreed pleasantly with him that she would soon be well enough to go home, and would be better off there. But she would not try to get up.

One afternoon, while she was lying with closed eyes, she heard the rattle of the doctor’s old buggy outside, and heard Manzanita greet him from where she was labelling jelly glasses on the porch. Mrs. Phelps could trace the old man’s panting approach to a porch chair, and heard Manzanita go into the house with a promise of lemonade and crullers. In a few minutes she was back again, and the clink of ice against glass sounded pleasantly in the hot afternoon.

“Well, how is she?” said the doctor, presently, with a long, wet gasp of satisfaction.

“She’s asleep,” answered Manzanita. “I just peeked in.–There’s more of that,” she added, in apparent reference to the iced drink. And then, with a change of tone, she added, “What’s the matter with her, anyway, Doc’ Jim?”

To which the old doctor with great simplicity responded:

“You’ve got me, Manz’ita. I can diagnose as good as any one,” he went on after a pause, “when folks have GOT something. If you mashed your hand in a food cutter, or c’t something poisonous, or come down with scarlet fever, I’d know what to do for ye. But, these rich women–“

“Well, you know, I could prescribe for her, and cure her, too,” said Manzanita. “All I’d do is tell her she’d got to go home right off. I’d say that this climate was too bracing for her, or something.”