The Desert and the Sown

s mixed ideas which side of himself to hang a pistol on.

"I have no particular quarrel with the lad, barring his great burly mouthful of a name, Bo--gardus! To call a child Moya and have her fetch up with her soft, Irish vowels against such a name as that! She had a fond idea that it was from Beauregard. But she has had to give that up. It's Dutch--Hudson River Dutch--for something horticultural--a tree, or an orchard, or a brush-pile; and she says it's a good name where it belongs. Pity it couldn't have stayed where it belongs.

"However, you won't find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's very proper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which he gets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability with them, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs the property and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on the newest reforms. And there's another hitch!--To belong to the Truly Good at twenty-four! But beggars can't be choosers. He's going to settle som