"I'd like to give him a threshing first, if you don't mind," said the
Young Doctor to her.

"Please let a little good advice satisfy you," Crozier remarked ruefully.
"It will seem like old times," he added rather bitterly.

"You are too young to have had 'old times,'" said Kitty with gentle
scorn. "I'll like you better when you are older," she added.

"Naughty jade," exclaimed the Young Doctor, "you ought to be more
respectful to those older than yourself."

"Oh, grandpapa!" she retorted.




CHAPTER VII

A WOMAN'S WAY TO KNOWLEDGE

The harvest was over. The grain was cut, the prairie no longer waved
like a golden sea, but the smoke of the incense of sacrifice still rose
in innumerable spirals in the circle of the eye. The ground appeared
bare and ill-treated, like a sheep first shorn; but yet nothing could
take away from it the look of plenty, even as the fat sides of the shorn
sheep invite the satisfied eye of the expert. The land now, all stubble,
still looked good for anything. If bare, it did not seem starved. It
was naked and unshaven; it was stripped like a boxer for the rubbing-down