We gathered wood and made a fire

THE PRAIRIE CHILD By ARTHUR STRINGER Author of “Are All Men Alike and the Lost Titian,” “The Prairie Mother,” “The Prairie Wife,” “The Wine of Life,” “The Door of Dread,” “The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep,” etc.

With Frontispiece by E. F. WARD A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers	New York
Published by arrangement with The Bobbs-Merrill Company Printed in U. S. A.

Printed in the United States of America

THE PRAIRIE CHILD

Friday the Eighth of March

“But the thing I can’t understand, Dinky-Dunk,is how you ever could.”

“Could what?” my husband asked in an aeratedtone of voice.

I had to gulp before I got it out.

“Could kiss a woman like that,” I managed to explain.

Duncan Argyll McKail looked at me with a muchcooler eye than I had expected. If he saw my shudder,he paid no attention to it.

“On much the same principle,” he quietly announced,“that the Chinese eat birds’ nests.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” I demanded,resenting the fact that he could stand as silent as aDecember beehive before my morosely questioningeyes.

“I mean that, being married, you’ve run awaywith the idea that all birds

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