“You’d better make friends with me, ma’am,” he said, “because we’re going to be neighbors.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m taking up my homestead right down here below you on Hidden Creek a ways.  About six miles below your ford.”

Miss Blake’s face filled with dark blood.  She said nothing, put up her magazine.

Sheila, however, exclaimed delightedly, “Taken up a homestead?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  He turned his floating, glowing look to her and there it stayed almost without deviation during the rest of his visit.  “I’ve built me a log house—­a dandy.  I had a man up from Rusty to help me.  I’ve bought me a cow.  I’m getting my furnishings ready.  That’s what I’ve been doing these two months.”

“And never rode up to call on us?” Sheila reproached him.

“No, ma’am.  I’ll tell you the reason for that.  I wasn’t sure of myself.”  She opened rather puzzled and astonished eyes at this, but for an instant his look went beyond her and remembered troubling things.  “You see, Miss Arundel, I’m not used to settling down.  That’s something that I’ve had no practice in.  I’m impatient.  I get tired quickly.  Damn quickly.  I change my mind.  It’s the worst thing in me—­a sort of devil-horse always thirsty for new things.  It’s touch and go with him.  He runs with me.  You see, I’ve always given him his head.”  His look had come back to her face and dwelt there speaking for him a language headier than that of his tongue.  “I thought I’d tie the dern fool down to some good tough work and test him out.  Well, ma’am, he hasn’t quit on me this time.  I think he won’t.  I’ve got a ball and chain round about that cloven foot.”  He drew at his cigarette, half-veiling in smoke the ardor of his look.  “I’d like to show you my house, Miss Arundel.  It’s fine.  I worked with a builder one season when I was a lad.  I’ve got it peeled inside.  The logs shine and I’ve got a fireplace twice the size of this in my living-room”—­he made graceful gestures with the hand that held the cigarette.  “Yes, ma’am, a living-room, and a kitchen, and,” with a whimsical smile, “a butler’s pantry.  And, oh, a great big bedroom that gets the morning sun.”  He paused an instant and flushed from chin to brow, an Anglo-Saxon flush it was, but the bold Latin eyes did not fall.  “I’ve made some furnishings already.  And I’ve sent out an order for kitchen stuff.”

Here Miss Blake changed the crossing of her legs.  Sheila was angry with herself because she was consumed with the contagion of his blush.  She wished that he would not look as if he had seen the blush and was pleased by it.  She wished that his clean young strength and beauty and the ardor of his eyes did not speak quite so eloquently.

“I bought a little black horse about so high”—­he held his hand an absurd distance from the floor and laughed—­“just the size for a little girl and—­do you know who I’m going to give him to?”

Here Miss Blake got up, strode to the pianola, adjusted it, and sat down, broad and solid and unabashed by absence of feminine draperies, upon the stool.  She played a comic song.