"I dare not. His demise would place me in bad odor."

She laughed merrily. Evidently she was finding him amusing company.
She looked him over appraisingly and queried bluntly,

"Were you educated abroad?"

"I was not. I'm a product of a one-room schoolhouse perched on a bare
hill down in San Marcos County."

"But you speak like a college man."

"I am. I'm a graduate of the University of California Agricultural
College, at Davis. I'm a sharp on pure-bred beef cattle, pure-bred
swine, and irrigation. I know why hens decline to lay when eggs are
worth eighty cents a dozen, and why young turkeys are so blamed hard to
raise in the fall. My grandfather and my father were educated at
Trinity College, Dublin, and were sharps on Latin and Greek, but I
never figured the dead languages as much of an aid to a man doomed from
birth to view cows from the hurricane-deck of a horse."

"But you have such a funny little clipped accent."

He opened his great black eyes in feigned astonishment.

"Oh, didn't you know?" he whispered.

"Know what?"