"Room!" said Octavia, intensely. "That's what produces the effect. I
know now what I've wanted--scope--range--room!"
"Smoking-room," said Teddy, unsentimentally. "I love to smoke in a
buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves
exertion."
The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellowship that it
was only by degrees that a sense of the strangeness of the new
relations between them came to be felt.
"Madama," said Teddy, wonderingly, "however did you get it into your
bead to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among the
upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?"
"I was broke, Teddy," said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred
upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of
chaparral; "I haven't a thing in the world but this ranch--not even
any other home to go to."
"Come, now," said Teddy, anxiously but incredulously, "you don't
mean it?"
"When my husband," said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word,
"died three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the
world's goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully
illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you
happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of
Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become
managers of sheep ranches?"
"It's easily explained in my case," responded Teddy, promptly.
Pages:
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319