shrugged her shoulders resignedly, the faint horse-shoe frown again
appearing in her forehead. "Well--go on, then," her voice as resigned as
her shoulders, "and get it over."

"It's this--" he hesitated and looked down at her a moment, and the
tenderness his glance expressed she did not lift her eyes to see and
would not have noticed if she had; "Pearl, Hanson ain't on the level."

She laughed that slightly grating, almost unpleasant, laugh of hers.
"It's no secret to me, Bob, that several of you are thinking that."

"We got cause to," he answered moodily; and then, as if struck by
something in her words, he looked at her quickly. "Has your Pop told you
anything?" There was surprise in both glance and voice.

"Not a thing," she assured him, scornfully amused by the question, "but
there are some things that don't have to be told. Do you suppose I
haven't caught on to the way you've all been acting?"

Again he looked his surprise. "We all been acting?" he repeated.

"Yes. I've seen things and I've felt them. Oh, you might just as well
out with it, Bob. What is it all about?"

He stared unseeing down the sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here the
desert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then by
the faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournful
plaint of a dove.

"Pearl, you can laugh at me if you want to, and say I'm jealous. That's