So if it's all the same to you, Mr.Ford, we won't talk about a grownd up school; I'd rather Cress be a little girl again among them other children.

I should be a powerful sight more kam if I knowed that when I was away huntin' stock or fightin' stakes with them Harrisons, that she was a settin' there with them and the birds and the bees, and listenin' to them and to you.
Mebbee there's been a little too many scrimmages goin' on round the ranch sence she's been a child; mebbee she orter know suthin' more of a man than a feller who sparks her and fights for her." The master was silent.

Had this dull, narrow-minded partisan stumbled upon a truth that had never dawned upon his own broader comprehension?
Had this selfish savage and literally red-handed frontier brawler been moved by some dumb instinct of the power of gentleness to understand his daughter's needs better than he?
For a moment he was staggered.

Then he thought of Cressy's later flirtations with Joe Masters, and her concealment of their meeting from her mother.

Had she deceived her father also?
Or was not the father deceiving him with this alternate suggestion of threat and of kindliness--of power and weakness.