There was great fun inside the big ranch house, as well as in the
open. In the evenings, especially, the young people's fun drew all
the idle hands about the place, as well as the family itself.

There were a player-piano and a fine phonograph in the big
drawing-room. The windows of this room opened down to the floor,
and the cowboys from the bunk house, the Mexicans, and even Ah
Foon, gathered on the side porch to hear the music.

When a dance record was put on the machine the clatter of boots on
the piazza betrayed more than one pair of punchers solemnly dancing
together.

"Though," complained Rhoda's father, "those spurs the boys wear
will be the ruination of my hardwood floor. Where do they think
they are? At a regular honky-tonk? None of 'em's got right good
sense."

"Let them dance, daddy," said his wife, who usually called the
ranch owner by the same pet name his daughter used. "They don't
often get a chance up here at the big house to show off. You and I
might better be out there, dancing with them."

"My glory, Ladybird!" gasped Mr. Hammond, in mock alarm. "I'm in my
stockin' feet. I'd get 'em full of splinters, like enough."

"Then, Walter, you come and dance with me," the blind woman cried.
"I'm bound to dance with somebody."

And to see her weaving in and out among the dancers in Walter's