"That was your victory, Miss Stevens. Allow me to congratulate you." If Thurston showed any ill grace in his tone it was without intent. But it did seem unfortunate that just as he was waxing eloquent and felt sure of himself and something of a hero, Mona should push him aside as though he were of no account and disperse a bunch of angry cowboys with half a dozen words.
She looked at him with her direct, blue-gray eyes, and smiled.
And her smile had no unpleasant uplift at the corners; it was the dimply, roguish smile of the pastel portrait only several times nicer. Re could hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared. When he came to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened--unless one observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks--while her mother, who showed not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX across the center.
"I knew all. the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right to the point," she declared. "Bless their hearts, they thought they would--but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad. If yuh go at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy. It done me good to hear yuh talk right up to 'em, Bud." Mrs.
Stevens had called hi Bud from the first time she laid eyes on him. "That's all under the sun they needed--just somebody to set 'em thinking about the other side. You're a real good speaker; seems to me you ought to study to be a preacher."Thurston's face turned red. But presently he forgot everything in his amazement, for Mona the dignified, Mona of the scornful eyes and the chilly smile, actually giggled--giggled like any ordinary girl, and shot him a glance that had in it pure mirth and roguish teasing, and a dash of coquetry. He sat down and giggled with her, feeling idiotically happy and for no reason under the sun that he could name.
He had promised his conscience that he would go home to the Lazy Eight in the morning, but he didn't; he somehow contrived, overnight, to invent a brand new excuse for his conscience to swallow or not, as it liked. Hank Graves had the same privilege; as for the Stevens trio, he blessed their hospitable souls for not wanting any excuse whatever for his staying. They were frankly glad to have him there; at least Mrs. Stevens and Jack were. As for Mona, he was not so sure, but he hoped she didn't mind.
This was the reason inspired by his great desire: he was going to write a story, and Mona was unconsciously to furnish the material for his heroine, and so, of course, he needed to be there so that he might study his subject. That sounded very well, to himself, but to Hank Graves, for some reason, it seemed very funny. When Thurston told him, Hank was taken with a fit of strangling that turned his face a dark purple. Afterward he explained brokenly that something had got down his Sunday throat--and Thurston, who had never heard of a man's Sunday throat, eyed him with suspicion. Hank blinked at him with tears still in his quizzical eyes and slapped him on the back, after the way of the West--and any other enlightened country where men are not too dignified to be their real selves--and drawled, in a way peculiar to himself:
"That's all right, Bud. You stay right here as long as yuh want to. I don't blame yuh--if I was you I'd want to spend a lot uh time studying this particular brand uh female girl myself.
She's out uh sight, Bud--and I don't believe any uh the boys has got his loop on her so far; though I could name a dozen or so that would be tickled to death if they had. You just go right ahead and file your little, old claim--""You're getting things mixed," Thurston interrupted, rather testily. "I'm not in love with her. I, well, it's like this: if you were going to paint a picture of those mountains off there, you'd want to be where you could look at them-- wouldn't you? You wouldn't necessarily want to--to own them, just because you felt they'd make a fine picture. Your interest would be, er, entirely impersonal.""Uh-huh," Hank agreed, his keen eyes searching Phil's face amusedly.
"Therefore, it doesn't follow that I'm getting foolish about a girl just because I--hang it! what the Dickens makes you look at a fellow that way? You make me?""Uh-huh," said Hank again, smoothing the lower half of his face with one hand. "You're a mighty nice little boy, Bud. I'll bet Mona thinks so, too and when yuh get growed up you'll know a whole lot more than yuh do right now. Well, I guess I'll be moving. When yuh get that--er--story done, you'll come back to the ranch, I reckon. Be good."Thurston watched him ride away, and then flounced, oh, men do flounce at times, in spirit, if not in deed; and there would be no lack of the deed if only they wore skirts that could rustle indignantly in sympathy with the wearer--to his room. Plainly, Hank did not swallow the excuse any more readily than did his conscience.