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“I did,” said I. “There was a drove of /javalis/ rooting around it. I could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there.”

“That’s where this music proposition started,” said Kinney. “I don’t mind telling you about it while we smoke. That’s where old Cal Adams lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar pony. And I don’t mind telling you that I was guilty in the second degree of hanging around old Cal’s ranch all the time I could spare away from lambing and shearing. Miss Marilla was her name; and I had figured it out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the chatelaine and lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney, Esq., where you are now a welcome and honoured guest.

“I will say that old Cal wasn’t distinguished as a sheepman. He was a little, old stoop-shouldered /hombre/ about as big as a gun scabbard, with scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he wasn’t even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don’t get eminent enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to die unwept and considerably unsung.

“But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious matters.

“You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn’t advance him any ideas on any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek root up to the time it was sacked and on the market.

“One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm with a lady’s magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific paper for old Cal.

“While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, ‘tickled to death’ with some news that couldn’t wait.

“‘Oh, Rush,’ she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification, ‘what do you think! Dad’s going to buy me a piano. Ain’t it grand? I never dreamed I’d ever have one.”

“‘It’s sure joyful,’ says I. ‘I always admired the agreeable uproar of a piano. It’ll be lots of company for you. That’s mighty good of Uncle Cal to do that.’

“‘I’m all undecided,’ says Marilla, ‘between a piano and an organ. A parlour organ is nice.’

“‘Either of ’em,’ says I, ‘is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,’ I says, ‘I shouldn’t like anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano- stool and rounding up the notes.’

“‘Oh, hush about that,’ says Marilla, ‘and go on in the house. Dad hasn’t rode out to-day. He’s not feeling well.’