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scrape away the snow with their feet to let them get at the grass.
    How big was Flying Tail? Oh, just medium. About 20,000 acres. Some of it wasn’t much good either: the part that lay south near the plains, for instance, Jim would like to sell, but no one would buy that piece of land, and you couldn’t blame them. And when you calculated that each steer needed about twenty acres’ grazing land in this part of the country, well, then—just figure that out for yourselves.
    The two visitors exchanged glances again. They had got lost somewhere among the quarter-horses, but they managed to grasp that it was all a problem any way you looked at it.
    “This house must be rather a white elephant, then,” the younger one said, getting muddled a bit in her geography. But her pretty blue eyes were full of sympathy.
    “It is such a perfect setting,” the older one said. “It is just the place for people to be happy, to have a holiday away from cities and machines and worries and frustrations. Mrs. Gunn, would you think it impertinent of us if we were to ask you to show us over the house? It is so enchanting from the outside that we are sure the architect must have been just as inspired indoors.”
    Mrs. Gunn gathered, in spite of the strange accents, that they wanted to see the house. She had no objections. It wasn’t that she was actually hoping for anything: she was only at the stage of thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
    There were seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, and four other rooms—a large living-room, an ample dining-room, a study (old Mr. Brent’s refuge from his wife’s innumerable guests), and a very small sitting-room with a glass-enclosed porch and a view of the mountains that silenced Mrs. Peel completely. Miss Bly remarked that Mrs. Brent had put out not only a lot of money on the house, but taste and thought as well. “Those were the days,” Mrs. Gunn said, and startled her visitors into wondering if she were a mind-reader. But Mrs. Gunn wasn’t thinking about money so much, for she added, “And they could come back again if only this house had the right mistress.”
    As they returned to the old-fashioned kitchen Sarah Bly said, “It seems strange—” She stopped, realising her tactlessness. She cleared her throat, ignored the smile in Margaret’s quick brown eyes, and changed her course. “How attractive your kitchen is!”
    “I like it,” Mrs. Gunn agreed heartily. “It’s not like the new kitchen, thank goodness.” She opened a door and showed them a narrow white room with streamlined equipment for cooking and washing.
    “That looks very efficient,” Miss Bly said, with renewed interest. “It would be very easy to have guests, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Gunn said grudgingly, “but it still looks like a hospital to me.” She led the way back to the cheerful wood stove and the comfortable rocking-chair. As she made them a cup of tea there were other questions to be answered: the little guest-cabin by the creek, the quarters for the help, the electric plant that hadn’t been used for some time, water running hot as well as very cold. “It all costs a mint of money,” Mrs. Gunn said truthfully and sadly. However, the ladies accepted another doughnut and praised Mrs. Gunn’s light hand and when they went upstairs to rest for a little (altitude or old age, Mrs. Peel wondered again) Mrs. Gunn decided that really they were as nice as could be, even if they did use an awful lot of extra words. No wonder they tired so easily.
    * * *
    “I can’t quite believe it,” Mrs. Peel said. But whether she was referring to the house or to the two doughnuts which had tempted her so successfully, or to the invitation to supper (relayed by Mrs. Gunn) with the master of the house in the dining-room tonight, Sarah Bly wasn’t sure.
    For a while they were silent. And, although they felt exhausted, they were too excited to sleep.
    Then, “I wonder if you are thinking what I am thinking?” Mrs.