"Who do you talk to about--these things," she asked after a brief pause.

Phyllis flushed. She was afraid she had offended where she had meant no offense. Monica's tone had been almost cold.

"I don't generally talk so much," she said hastily. "I like to think most--when I'm plowing, or working on the farm. I talk to my beau sometimes," she added, with a blush.

"You have a beau," said Monica, with a ready smile. "But of course you must have--with your pretty face."

"Oh, yes, and we're going to get married soon," Phyllis hurried on, basking once more in the other's smile. "His mamma's going to buy him a swell farm and start him right, and we're going to get married. Frank's awfully kind. He's--he's----"

"Frank? Frank--who?" Monica had no need of the information, but she was anxious to encourage the girl.

"Frank Burton. He's much bigger than me, and he thinks a heap. I just love him. I just love him so I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't got him. He's only a boy. We're the same age, and he's got the loveliest face."

"And when is he going to get this farm?"

"Soon. Quite soon. Then we'll be married. It's--it's good to love some one and feel they love you," Phyllis went on, almost abstractedly. "It makes you feel that you can work ever so. The days get short, and the nights shorter still. It makes the air all full of things that make you want to laugh, and sing, and be good to everything--even to spiders and--and bugs and things. Yes, it sets everything moving quick about you, and all the time it's just you, because you're full of happiness and looking forward. The only thing that's slow is the time between seeing him."

Monica smiled, and Phyllis laughed happily.

The mistress of Deep Willows could have sat on indefinitely talking and laughing with this frank, ingenious child, but she knew that, however reluctantly, she must tear herself away. Already the sun was high in the sky, and Phyllis had to reach home by noon, while she had her round to complete. So she lifted her reins, and her dozing broncho threw up its head alertly.

"I think you'll be very happy with your beau, Phyllis," she said, gently. "You would make any man happy. If this Frank Burton is all you say he is, and I'm sure he is, I fancy you'll live to see the day when you have quite lost your desire to say 'mam'--when you speak to me."

The girl shook her head seriously.

"I hope not."

Monica's smile was at thoughts which were quite impossible for the other to read.

"I hope that day will come," she said. "So there we must agree to think differently. Meanwhile, may I come and see you, and will you come and see me?" Her eyes grew almost pathetically appealing. "Will you?" she urged.

A flush of embarra.s.sment swept over the girl's happy face. In a moment she was struggling to express her grat.i.tude.

"Oh, ma--Mrs. Hendrie," she cried. "Me come to Deep Willows? I--I--oh, it would be too much."

"Will you?"

Monica had set her heart on obtaining this girl's promise.

"Oh--yes--if--if----"

"There must be no 'ifs,'" Monica cried. Then she urged her horse nearer the buckboard and held out her hand.

"Good-bye, Phyllis," she said, lingering over the girl's name caressingly. "I shall keep you to your word. And I shall come to see you. Good-bye, my dear," she cried again. "A pleasant journey."

The girl pressed the neatly gloved hand her new friend hold out to her, and her old horse, after its welcome rest, started off with added briskness. She was loath enough to go, but she had yet many miles to travel before noon. She called out a warm good-bye, and waved her small brown hand.

"I surely will come," she cried, "I'll never--never forget."

Monica watched them go till the rattling old buckboard dropped behind one of the rising prairie rollers. Then, with a deep sigh, she set off toward her home.

CHAPTER XII

THE CLEAN SLATE

Monica's chance meeting with Phyllis Raysun was not without its effect on both their lives. An effect both marked and immediate in each case.

The girl drove on home in a state of considerable elation, and told her story of the "great lady" to her sympathetic, if not very clever mother, Pleasant Raysun. She told it not as one might speak of a pa.s.sing incident on her journey, but as an important factor in her uneventful life.

"Mamma," she said, after a thoughtful pause, the story having come to its commonplace ending, "it likely don't sound great to you; maybe you'll forget about it, or, if you don't, you'll say I'm just a sentimental girl whose feelings get clear away with her. And maybe I am, maybe you're right; but I don't think so. She's a lovely, lovely woman, and somehow I kind of feel I'm all mixed up with her already. I don't think folks _make_ friends. Friends are just friends. They are, or they aren't. Even if you don't know them, they are your friends, waiting till the time comes when you meet. That's how I feel about Mrs.

Hendrie. I--I'm sure we're friends, and always have been."

Pleasant Raysun was a plump body, whose dark eyes and soft mouth were strangely opposed in their efforts to display the character behind. She was just a gentle, soft creature, quite devoid of any attainments beyond a capacity for physical work, and an adoring affection for the daughter to whom she looked for guidance.

"Maybe you're right, my dear," she said amiably, "you generally are.

How you know things beats me all to death. Whoever would 'a' guessed Pop Toogood was sick all this way off like you did? I'm sure I wouldn't. An' then about buyin' a new plow an' binder by instalments.

Who'd 'a' thought o' that? It surely must be instinc', as you often say, only wher' you get it beats me. I never had instinc'. Nor did your pop. Leastways he never showed it me. Sometimes I sort o' know when the coffee's just right--maybe that's instinc'--which reminds me the hash must be nigh overbaked."

She rose from her rocker and toddled across to the cookstove, leaving her daughter to her reflections. She had no power of entering into any of the girl's thoughts and feelings. Her love for her offspring extended to an unreasoning admiration for her capacity and beauty, the only practical expression of which was a simple, loving care for her creature comforts.

With Monica the effect of that meeting on the trail was marked in a wholly different manner. She had at last seen this girl whom her boy had told her of in such glowing terms. She had seen, and she knew that she approved his choice. As she listened to her talk, as she became aware of her views upon matters on which she believed so few girls of her age ever thought seriously, she became more and more convinced that her boy had blindly stumbled upon the one girl to be his helpmeet in the upward career they had marked out for him.

Thus she spent the rest of her day with an added light shining in upon Frank's future, and with it came a swift decision to act promptly, and carry out her carefully considered plans without any further delay. She felt it to be best from every point of view. It would be best for Frank, since it would leave him free to begin his real business of life at the moment he selected; it would be best for her, since she would then be free to enter upon her control of the farm with a slate wiped perfectly clean of the last shadow of the past which marred its surface.

So she sent word to Angus that she required the best team of drivers and a buggy, since Hendrie's automobile was away, to take her in to Calford the next day.

Her order was received without enthusiasm, but with considerable suspicion by her husband's manager. So much so that the company at the Russell Hotel that night were treated to a more than usual morose severity on the part of this local magnate. He wrapped himself in an impenetrable and sour silence, out of which the most ardent devotion to his favorite spirit could not rouse him.

Monica spent her last hours before retiring to bed in writing a long letter to Frank. She chose the library, or office, as her husband preferred to call it, for her correspondence. She preferred this room to any other in the house. Perhaps it was the effect of her long years spent in a business career. Perhaps it was because it was so soon to become the seat of her administration. Perhaps, again, it was the thoughts of the man who had designed it for his own accommodation that inspired her liking.

It was a luxurious place, and the great desk in the center of it was always a subtle invitation to her. The subdued light focusing down upon the clean white blotting pad, with its delicately chased silver corners, never failed to please her whenever she entered the room at night. Just now she felt more satisfaction than ever as she contemplated ridding herself of this last shadow which marred her happy outlook.

Her maid had insisted on changing her from her habit, which Monica warmly regarded as her business dress, to a semi-evening toilet of costly simplicity. This was a feature of her new life which Monica found it difficult to appreciate. She had looked after herself for so long that she rather feared the serious eyes and deliberate devotion to the conventions of the well-trained Margaret. There was one service that she could not induce herself to submit to. It was that of being prepared for her nightly repose. On this point the mistress of Deep Willows was adamant, and Margaret was unwillingly forced to give way.

Now she took her seat at the desk. She drew a sheet of notepaper from the stationery cabinet, and, for some moments, sat gazing at it, lost in pleasant thoughts of the young girl she had met that morning.

It was curious what a sudden and powerful hold this child of eighteen had taken upon her affections. She thought she had never encountered any one of her own s.e.x who so pleased her, and she sat there idly dreaming of the days to come, when this boy and girl would marry, and she could subtly, almost unnoticed, draw them into her life.

Yes, it could be done; it could be done through Phyllis. Frank was far too loyal ever, by word or deed, to jeopardize her in her husband's regard. Everything was simplifying itself remarkably. Fortune was certainly with her. She smiled as she thought how they would come to her. A local farmer and his wife, in whom she was interested. Her husband would be rather pleased. He would undoubtedly encourage her in her whim. Then, if he should recognize Frank as the original of the photograph he had once torn up, that would be easily explained and would be an added reason for befriending the couple--seeing that Frank would then be married. Oh, yes, a little tact, a little care, and she would have a daughter as well as a son.

Then she would eventually get Alexander interested in the boy. And when that was achieved she would begin to develop her plans. Frank might be taken into some of her husband's schemes, after which it would be easy stepping upwards toward that fortune she had designed for him.

But she was suddenly awakened to her waste of time, and her own physical tiredness, by the chiming of the little clock in front of her, which was accusingly pointing the hour of ten. It reminded her, too, of the early morning start she must make in the morrow, so she s.n.a.t.c.hed at a pen to begin her letter.

Habit was strong with Monica. An ivory penholder and gilt nib had no charms for her, so the humble vulcanite of the stylograph of her stenography days was selected, and she prepared to write.