“Work, of course, has much to do with any one’s happiness,” replied Madeline.  “No one can be happy who has no work.  As regards myself—­for the rest I can hardly tell you.  I have never tried to put it in words.  Frankly, I believe, if I had not had money that I could not have found such contentment here.  That is not in any sense a judgment against the West.  But if I had been poor I could not have bought and maintained my ranch.  Stillwell tells me there are many larger ranches than mine, but none just like it.  Then I am almost paying my expenses out of my business.  Think of that!  My income, instead of being wasted, is mostly saved.  I think—­I hope I am useful.  I have been of some little good to the Mexicans—­eased the hardships of a few cowboys.  For the rest, I think my life is a kind of dream.  Of course my ranch and range are real, my cowboys are typical.  If I were to tell you how I feel about them it would simply be a story of how Madeline Hammond sees the West.  They are true to the West.  It is I who am strange, and what I feel for them may be strange, too.  Edith, hold to your own impressions.”

“But, Majesty, my impressions have changed.  At first I did not like the wind, the dust, the sun, the endless open stretches.  But now I do like them.  Where once I saw only terrible wastes of barren ground now I see beauty and something noble.  Then, at first, your cowboys struck me as dirty, rough, loud, crude, savage—­all that was primitive.  I did not want them near me.  I imagined them callous, hard men, their only joy a carouse with their kind.  But I was wrong.  I have changed.  The dirt was only dust, and this desert dust is clean.  They are still rough, loud, crude, and savage in my eyes, but with a difference.  They are natural men.  They are little children.  Monty Price is one of nature’s noblemen.  The hard thing is to discover it.  All his hideous person, all his actions and speech, are masks of his real nature.  Nels is a joy, a simple, sweet, kindly, quiet man whom some woman should have loved.  What would love have meant to him!  He told me that no woman ever loved him except his mother, and he lost her when he was ten.  Every man ought to be loved—­ especially such a man as Nels.  Somehow his gun record does not impress me.  I never could believe he killed a man.  Then take your foreman, Stewart.  He is a cowboy, his work and life the same as the others.  But he has education and most of the graces we are in the habit of saying make a gentleman.  Stewart is a strange fellow, just like this strange country.  He’s a man, Majesty, and I admire him.  So, you see, my impressions are developing with my stay out here.”

“Edith, I am so glad you told me that,” replied Madeline, warmly.