daughters he had been denied.

It was an ideal place for hammocks and romance--a place where
dainty maidens might dream their way to womanhood. And Peaceful
Hart, when all was done, grew old watching five full-blooded boys
clicking their heels unromantically together as they roosted upon
the porch, and threw cigarette stubs at the water lilies while
they wrangled amiably over the merits of their mounts; saw them
drag their blankets out into the broody dusk of the grove when
the nights were hot, and heard their muffled swearing under their
"tarps" because of the mosquitoes which kept the night air
twanging like a stricken harp string with their song.

They liked the place well enough. There were plenty of shady
places to lie and smoke in when the mercury went sizzling up its
tiny tube. Sometimes, when there was a dance, they would choose
the best of Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and
perhaps their hatbands, also. Peaceful would then suck harder
than ever at his pipe, and his faded blue eyes would wander
pathetically about the little paradise of his making, as if he
wondered whether, after all, it had been worth while.

A tight picket fence, built in three unswerving lines from the
post planted solidly in a cairn of rocks against a bowlder on the
eastern rim of the pond, to the road which cut straight through
the ranch, down that to the farthest tree of the grove, then back
to the bluff again, shut in that tribute to the sentimental side
of Peaceful's nature. Outside the fence dwelt sturdier, Western
realities.