got mountains to spare."

"Well, then, that's arranged. What about a week's board?"

"I guess you can stay if you're satisfied."

"I'll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?"

The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the fear
of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said,
tentatively: "Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say they
pay as much as twenty dollars a week."

"But you don't expect hotel prices?"

"I don't know as I do. We've never had anybody before."

The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her
suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence. "I'm in
the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stay several
weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?"

"I guess that 'll do," said the woman, and she went out with the pie,
which she had kept in her hand.




IV.