He had a past which, she sensed vaguely, had been rather brilliant.  He must have been a war correspondent, because he compared the present great war with the Japanese-Russian War and with the South African War, and he seemed to have been right in the middle of both, or he could not have spoken so intimately of them.  He seemed to know all about the real, underlying causes of them and knew just where it would all end, and what nations would be drawn into it before they were through.  He did not say that he knew all about the war, but after he had spoken a few casual sentences upon the subject Helen May felt that he knew a great deal more than he said.

He also knew all about raising goats.  He slid very easily, too, from the war to goat-raising.  He had about four hundred, and he gave her a lot of valuable advice about the most profitable way in which to handle them.

When he saw Vic legging it along the slope behind the Basin to head off Billy and his slavish nannies, he shook his head commiseratingly.  “There is not a scintilla of doubt in my mind,” he told her gently, “that a trained dog would be of immeasurable benefit to you.  I fear you made a grave mistake, Miss Stevenson, when you failed to possess yourself of a good dog.  I might go so far as to say that a dog is absolutely indispensable to the successful handling of goats, or, for that matter, of sheep, either.” (He pronounced the last word eyether.)

“That’s what my desert man told me,” said Helen May demurely, “only he didn’t tell me that way, exactly.”

“Yes?  Then I have no hesitation whatever in assuring you that your desert man was unqualifiedly accurate in his statement of your need.”

Helen May bit her lip.  “Then I’ll tell him,” she said, still more demurely.

Secretly she hoped that he would rise to the bait, but he apparently accepted her words in good faith and went on telling her just how to range goats far afield in good weather so that the grazing in the Basin itself would be held in reserve for storms.  It was a very grave error, said Holman Sommers, to exhaust the pasturage immediately contiguous to the home corral.  It might almost be defined as downright improvidence.  Then he forestalled any resentment she might feel by apologizing for his seeming presumption.  But he apprehended the fact that she and her brother were both inexperienced, and he would be sorry indeed to see them suffer any loss because of that inexperience.  His practical knowledge of the business was at her service, he said, and he should feel that he was culpably negligent of his duty as a neighbor if he failed to point out to her any glaring fault in their method.

Helen May had felt just a little resentful of the words downright improvidence.  Had she not walked rather than spend money and grass on a horse?  Had she not daily denied herself things which she considered necessities, that she might husband the precious balance of Peter’s insurance money?  But she swallowed her resentment and thanked him quite humbly for his kindness in telling her how to manage.  She owned to her inexperience, and she said that she would greatly appreciate any advice which he might care to give.