For a week she was so moody and irascible that Abraham twice gave warning, Old Mac artfully took to his bed with rheumatism, and only the inexcitable Chuma was unconcerned. She rode her horse nearly to death, snubbed Anabel-whose children were down with the measles-over the telephone, and even boxed the ears of a dilatory hen. At the end of the week a sudden appreciation of her likeness to a cross old maid frightened her, and time and the weather completed the cure. Her ill-humor, which had scourged through every avenue of her being, took itself off so completely that it seemed to announce it had had enough of her and would return no more.
And the spring came with a rush. The hills burst into buttercups, "blue eyes," yellow and purple lupins, the heavy pungent gold-red poppy. The young gr
